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Chinese officials deny protest claim by Dalai Lama

Authorities in a Tibetan area of southwest China denied yesterday that a protest had taken place, after the Dalai Lama said Chinese troops there had fired on protesters this week.

An official at the local government office of Garze, a Tibetan-majority town in Sichuan Province, where the protest is alleged to have taken place, said no such incident had occurred.

“There has not been any protest,” the official, who refused to be named, said by phone.

A man surnamed Liu, working at the police bureau of Garze prefecture, also denied any unrest.

“There has been no protest, it’s been calm recently,” he said.

In an interview with France’s Le Monde published on Thursday, the Dalai Lama said Chinese security forces in Garze had opened fire on protesters on Monday.

He later denied a comment attributed to him by the paper that 140 people had died. His aide later said there were casualties but it was impossible to get further information because Chinese security forces had locked down the area.

Tibetan activists also said they could get no information from Garze. Pro-Tibet Web sites remained blocked in the Olympic press center and elsewhere in China yesterday.

In related news, Apple also said yesterday that it was investigating why access to iTunes appeared to be blocked for users in China after a pro-Tibet album became a hit on the online music store.

The iTunes download site has been unavailable for many users within China in the past week, but Apple’s Beijing-based spokeswoman Huang Yuna said she did not know why people were unable to log on.

“We’ve noticed the problem. It’s true that users may fail to log in to iTunes store right now,” she said.

“We are still investigating,” she said, but would not confirm if Apple was in contact with officials.

The restrictions come after Songs for Tibet, a pro-Tibet album featuring songs by artists such as Sting, was released on iTunes just before the Games started.

Meanwhile, foreign pro-Tibet activists hailed their Olympic campaign a success yesterday, despite the fact 10 of their protesters were missing and believed to be in police custody in Beijing.

Students for a Free Tibet held a news conference in Beijing’s diplomatic quarter to mark the end a series of protests targeting the Olympics to raise awareness about Chinese repression in Tibet.

“We organized eight non-violent direct actions here while we’ve been in China, successfully — we call it our lucky eight,” Ginger Cassady, a Students for a Free Tibet activist from San Francisco, told reporters.

Beijing police confirmed yesterday that 10-day detention terms were handed out to six unnamed foreigners picked up on Tuesday for disturbing public order.

Police have refused to say who they are but Students for a Free Tibet said Tom Grant, a 39-year-old Emmy Award-winning documentary maker, was one of the six US activists believed detained.

Four other Tibet activists — a Briton, a German and two other Americans — were detained on Thursday and are believed to have also been given 10-day detentions.

Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee yesterday described the rough treatment of two Associated Press photographers trying to cover a protest in Beijing as unfortunate.

Plainclothes officers “roughed up” the photographers as they took pictures of the pro-Tibet protest near the Olympic area on Wednesday, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC) said.

“One was knocked to the ground, had his face pressed in the dirt, arm twisted behind his back and his cameras ripped from him,” the FCCC said. “The other was tackled from behind, pushed to the ground, had his camera grabbed.”

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