Paramilitary and plainclothes police blanketed the Tibetan capital with patrols and checkpoints yesterday, imposing what witnesses called a tense calm on the first anniversary of a violent anti-Chinese riot.
Lhasa residents said police with rifles or batons marched around the Jokhang Temple and the adjacent Barkhor Square in the old city, where protesters ran rampant last year. A Hong Kong tourist said two military helicopters hovered over the city in the morning — a rare sight — and that officers demanded to see identification at checkpoints.
“I was constantly stopped for identity check in the past few days,” said the tourist, who only wanted to be identified by his surname, Chu, because of the heavy security. “I was stopped twice last night on my way back to my hotel from dinner.”
The Communist Party secretary of China’s Tibetan government defended the heavy troop presence as necessary to quell any “separatist” violence.
Hong Kong RTHK radio posted photos on its Web site showing shuttered shops around the Jokhang temple, while armed police with automatic rifles patrolled nearby.
The South China Morning Post carried reports from an unidentified staff reporter describing door-to-door inspections of hotels and neighborhoods to round up “suspicious people.”
The China News Service showed a photograph of two schoolchildren walking past a dozen soldiers in combat gear in the deserted Barkhor market street in the center of Lhasa.
“Anniversary of the ‘March 14’ sacrifice: behind every statistic is grief and terror,” the headline said.
Anyone in Lhasa without a local identity card faced questioning and possible detention, the SCMP said.
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