Tibetan suspect, police officer die in China gunbattle (Roundup)

Apr 30, 2008, 6:31 GMT

Beijing - A Tibetan accused of trying to incite a riot and a police officer were killed in a gunfight in western China, the official news agency Xinhua reported Wednesday in the first official confirmation of a Tibetan killed by authorities since unrest broke out in March.

Police tried to arrest the suspect in Qinghai province, the suspect resisted and gunfire broke out, Xinhua said, citing the provincial Public Security Department.

The officer, identified as Lama Cedain, also an ethnic Tibetan, was killed and other officers then killed the suspect, the report said.

The suspect, who was not identified, was accused of leading pro-independence 'insurgents' in attempting to incite local herdsmen to riot March 21 in western Hongke Town in Dari.

Protests against Chinese rule in Tibet escalated into rioting on March 14 in Lhasa, where shops belonging to ethnic Han Chinese were looted and set on fire.

The Chinese government said 18 civilians and a police officer were killed in the rioting in the Tibetan capital, but the Tibetan government in exile said about 140 people were killed in the demonstrations and Chinese crackdown, most of them Tibetans shot by Chinese police.

Chinese authorities had previously insisted they had not killed anyone in the crackdown and blamed Tibetan 'rioters' for the deaths of the 18 civilians.

On Tuesday, China sentenced 30 defendants for terms ranging from three years to life in prison for participating in the Lhasa riots.

Human Rights Watch on Wednesday criticized those trial as unfair, saying they were conducted in secret and the defendants did not have access to counsel. Authorities have also failed to distinguish between peaceful and violent protesters and assumed the defendants' guilt rather than innocence, the New York-based rights group charged.

'The Chinese authorities have so restricted the defendants' rights that the hearings are no more than a rubber stamp,' said Sophie Richardson, Human Rights Watch's Asia advocacy director. 'This isn't fair and transparent justice. It's political punishment masquerading as a legal process.'

Xinhua reported that the sentencings were handed down in 'an open court session,' but Human Rights Watch said the trials were conducted secretly on undisclosed dates this month and did not meet minimum international standards of due process.

In addition, attorneys for the defendants withdrew after judicial officials in Beijing threatened to discipline them or suspend their licenses, explaining that the cases were 'sensitive,' the rights group said.

'Guilty or innocent, these Tibetans (and any other defendant in China), are entitled to a fair trial,' Richardson said.