Reports: Two killed in western China clashes intervention, condemning visits with Dalai Lama, organizing Tibet trip for foreign journalists (Roundup)

Mar 25, 2008, 11:31 GMT

Beijing - Clashes between armed police and Tibetan protestors have left at least two people dead, official Chinese media and a rights group said Tuesday.

A mob armed with knives and stones killed one policeman and injured several others Monday in China's south-western province of Sichuan, the official Xinhua news agency reported Tuesday.

However, a Tibetan exile group said residents of Luhuo reported an 18-year-old monk was killed and dozens injured by the armed police after they fired indiscriminately into about 200 protesting Tibetans, including many nuns and monks, as they approached a government building.

A second monk is in critical condition, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said.

The clash occurred Monday in Garze prefecture, local authorities said.

The police officer was killed instantly in the riots, Xinhua said without reporting any civilian casualties.

'The police were forced to fire warning shots and dispersed the lawless mobsters,' Xinhua quoted a local official as saying.

Xinhua also reported that 381 people who were involved in protests last week in another Sichuan county, Aba, had surrendered to police by Monday.

China admitted to firing on protesters in self-defence in Aba city on March 16 but reported no deaths there. Inhabitants had reported at least 18 demonstrators killed by police shots in Aba.

In another report by official Chinese media, the Xizang Ribao, or Tibet Daily, reported that Chinese police had arrested 13 Tibetans who took part in a protest march on March 10 in Lhasa, Tibet's capital.

The march took place near Jokhang Temple in central Lhasa, considered Tibetan Buddhism's most sacred site, the newspaper said.

Protests by Tibetans in China and other countries began March 10, the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising in Tibet against Chinese rule. The demonstrations escalated into riots on March 14 in Lhasa.

China said 19 people died in the violence in Lhasa, but the India-based Tibetan government in exile said it confirmed the deaths of about 140 people, many of them Tibetans shot by Chinese police.

The protests and violence has since spread into neighbouring Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu provinces.

The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, on Tuesday urged Tibetans not to adopt violent methods of protest and said he would resign if the violent demonstrations continued, news reports said.

'I have always made it clear that the expression of deep emotion should be in control,' PTI news agency quoted the Tibetan leader as saying in New Delhi, where he was holding a weeklong meditation workshop. 'If it is out of control, we have no option. If the violent demonstration will continue, I would resign.'

China, however, has accused the Nobel Peace Prize winner of fomenting the violence. On Tuesday, it warned foreign governments from interfering in its rule of Tibet and warned their leaders from receiving the Dalai Lama.

'Tibet is an internal affair of China and brooks no foreign interference,' Qin Gang, spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry, said to a question about whether international mediators could play a role in ending the unrest in Tibet.

After leaders of governments in Britain, France and Poland said they were prepared to meet the exiled Dalai Lama, Qin condemned such an action, saying, 'To provide him with a venue for his splittist activities is not proper.'

China insists the Dalai Lama is a separatist although the spiritual leader says he only seeks great autonomy for Tibet within China and said Tuesday in India that he respected Chinese communism.

The extent and death toll of the unrest is not clear because the Chinese media is heavily censored and China has forced all foreign correspondents out of Tibet.

In reaction to criticism over its decision to bar foreign journalists from travelling to the areas of Tibet and neighbouring provinces that have been the sites of anti-China demonstrations, China announced Tuesday that it has organized a trip for a dozen selected foreign correspondents to Lhasa.

The foreign journalists, who are to leave Wednesday, would not be allowed freedom of movement with Qin saying the restriction was necessary to protect their safety.

Chinese authorities have organized interviews 'with victims of criminal acts' and visits to places that were 'looted and burned,' Qin said.

How the participants would be selected among the 700 foreign correspondents accredited in Beijing was unknown.

Chinese authorities have insisted that the violence has been caused by Tibetan rioters against Han Chinese.

While they have accused foreign media of failing to report the full truth or distorting what is happening in the Tibet-related unrest, state censors have impeded the reporting of anti-China protests at the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony Monday in Greece in the large Chinese newspapers, satellite broadcasts about the unrest by the US news channel CNN are continuously disrupted and websites run by Tibetan exile groups are blocked.