Tibet Unrest 2008

Updated 2:09 PM 31-Mar-08


Military mobilised in paradise Video Clip 1


Military mobilised in paradise Video Clip 2
30 Mar 08: The Chinese army has taken over the tourist town of Tibet in an effort to quell anti-China protests.
Updated 12:48 PM 31-Mar-08

Tibet protesters disrupt Olympic torch lightingGMT 25/03/2008 Torch ceremony interruption Video Clip Pro-Tibet protestors run up behind Liu Qi (front left), the head of the Beijing Olympic organising committee. Shortly after the ceremony, more protestors covered in red paint (right) were arrested Two protestors breached a cordon of about 1,000 police officers at Ancient Olympia to display a flag demanding a boycott of the Olympics amid mounting controversy over China's crackdown in Tibet. The men, believed to be associated with the French human rights group Reporters Without Borders, ran up behind Liu Qi, the head of the Beijing Olympic organising committee, as he spoke before the flame was lit. One of the Tibet protestors - waving an 'Olympic handcuffs' flag - is pulled away by police One man unfurled a black flag portraying the Olympic rings made from handcuffs. Another tried to grab the microphone from Mr Liu and shouted "freedom, freedom". VIA Telegraph.co.uk

Updated 1:31 PM 29-Mar-08
China embarrassed by Tibetan monks - 27 Mar 08 video clipDespite cloudy weather, the Olympic torch was lit using the rays of the sun
What was supposed to be a carefully organised tour to show the Chinese view on Tibet, has instead turned into an embarrassment.

Updated 21-Mar-08

Mounted Tibetans storm town March 19,2008 More than 1,000 Tibetans, some on horseback, have charged into a remote chinese town at, north-west Gansu province, attacking a government building and hoisting their national flag. They were repelled by about 100 heavily armed soldiers using tear gas. However, there has been little footage from Tibet and Tibetan-populated areas of western China, where the authorities have clamped down on foreign reporting.

China suspends foreign travel to Tibet(Video)

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has accused the Tibetan spiritual leader of masterminding the protests, that from his base in the Indian town of Dharamsala, where he lives in exile, is responsible for the riot on Friday in Tibet's capital, Lhasa. The Dalai Lama called for an end to the violence in Tibetan regions on Tuesday, and said he would step down as the head of Tibet's exiled state if that would stop the bloodshed.The Dalai Lama says the rioting in Lhasa, which followed several days of peaceful marches by Tibet's Buddhist clergy, was spontaneous. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that there would be no boycott of the Beijing games.IOC vice president Thomas Bach said the committee will speak with China about human rights. On Saturday, the activist group Students for a Free Tibet demanded that officials scrap a plan to have the Olympic Torch pass through Tibet. The committee held the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City even though authorities had killed hundreds of nonviolent protesters days before the event.


Dalai Lama answers Beijing(Video)

China on 17 March Monday said Tibetan rioters burned or hacked to death 13 innocent civilians during violent protests against Chinese rule in Lhasa, as it denied using lethal force to quell the unrest. Tibetan exiles said on the weekend that 80 Tibetans had been confirmed killed, and that possibly more than 100 had died. But Qiangba Puncog, the chairman of Tibet's local government, insisted Chinese security forces had not used lethal force or fired any gunshots, contradicting the accounts of foreign tourists who were in the city at the time. The PLA (People's Liberation Army) was only involved after the riots had taken place to clean up the city and help maintain order, he added.

The Chinese Communists annexed Tibet in 1951 and since then have systematically moved Han Chinese into the mountainous region in what many see as an attempt to wipe out dissent among the native population.

Juan Carlos Alonso, 46, a Spaniard staying on Beijing Street in the old quarter near some of Lhasa's holiest shrines witness enraged Tibetan youths embarked on a rampage of destruction against Chinese businesses in Lhasa that left parts of the once-fabled city in ruins.The former employee of a German engineering firm who had a first-hand view of the onslaught in the streets of Lhasa on Friday added that the Chinese lowered the shutters, but the Tibetans kicked their way in, dragging people out, beating them with stones. There were knifes, stones, machetes, butcher knifes -- they were using everything that came to hand. "Many Chinese were running for their lives," Alonso said, estimating that he had seen at least 35 ethnic Chinese covered in blood, but had not seen any dead. The masses of rioters as mainly Tibetan men in their late teens with only a few monks in the crowd. An aggressive Chinese military guy came up to him and his two companions shouting instructions as he pumped his machine gun in the air.

The basic facts are not in dispute: protests led by Buddhist supporters of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama last week were met by a security response, triggering an escalation into deadly full-scale riots. Chinese propaganda tells of rampaging bloodthirsty mobs killing the innocent. Tibet activists stoke fears of a bloody Chinese crackdown. The Chinese say the world is not reporting accurately, but at the same time they don't allow people to go in and report it

The international community pressed China to show restraint over its handling of strife in Tibet's capital Lhasa.Chinese soldiers are blanketing Lhasa as part of a security clampdown which followed deadly protests in the city against China's rule of Tibet. Taiwan's foreign ministry express that Taiwan strongly condemn China's use of force to suppress Tibet and urge the international community to monitor the development in Tibet. Shuei Kobayashi, who heads the Japan Committee for Tibet criticized China's response and added the world should not permit China to host the Olympics.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the German government has always supported the Tibetans' claim to religious and cultural autonomy though not becoming a separate state.Washington has urged Beijing to exercise restraint, as has Australia. France called on China to respect human rights on Sunday as scuffles broke out in front of the country's embassy in Paris during a demonstration against China's crackdown on protests in Tibet.

Meanwhile, the anti-China protests spilled over into neighbouring Sichuan province Sunday, where there is a large Tibetan population. The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said it had confirmed reports of eight deaths in Ngaba County "after armed troops shot indiscriminately into the peacefully protesting Tibetans."

It also reported a second day of protests by ethnic Tibetans in Lanzhou, in China's northwestern Gansu province.





Dalai Lama fears 'cultural genocide' in Tibet

Human rights groups around the world are skeptical. There are unconfirmed accounts of security forces using tear gas, cattle prods, live bullets and brute force to quell the demonstrations that began last Monday with a peaceful march by monks commemorating the 49th anniversary of a failed anti-Chinese demonstration in Tibet.




Tibetan women storm in front of chinese embassy in India



Tibetan protests turn violent in Sydney (Video above)

Sunday March 16, 2008
The protests in Sydney came a day after China said 10 people were killed in rare unrest in the Tibetan city of Lhasa. Beijing on Saturday said it gave rioters until midnight on Monday to turn themselves in.

In Sydney, a 31-year-old man was charged with assaulting a police after four pro-Tibet activists were arrested during a protest outside the Chinese consulate on Dunblane Street, Camperdown. The protest escalated when activists climbed onto the front gate of the consulate and damaged a flag inside. "A police officer was allegedly hit over the head with a placard before being punched and kicked," a NSW police statement said.

In Melbourne, more than 100 protesters demonstrated outside the Chinese consulate, with some hurling eggs and water bottles at the mission in suburban Toorak.At one point, a car driven by an unidentified Chinese man was pelted with eggs and battered with flagpoles as it drove into the consulate compound.
VIA

CNN World - Tibet - Protest march quashed in India(Video Above)

March 13, 2008
Tibetan exiles in northern India who began a six-month march this week to protest China's control of their homeland were arrested Thursday and went on a hunger strike they say will continue until they are released.They had planned to reach the Tibetan capital of Lhasa as the Olympic Games opened in Beijing this August. VIA

March 12, 2008
The US has dropped China from its list of the world's worst human rights violators, but added Syria, Uzbekistan and Sudan to its top 10 offenders.
Despite removing Beijing from its top blacklist, the State Department's 2007 Human Rights Report said China, which has raised hopes internationally that it would improve human rights by hosting the 2008 Olympics, still had a poor record overall. VIA

26/02/2008
Oscar-winning film director Steven Spielberg has pulled out as artistic adviser to the Beijing Olympics over the Chinese government's policy towards Sudan and the conflict in Darfur. The Olympics shouldn't be politicized, and yet again as a nation that doesn't believe in interfering in other countries' internal affairs, why China can't be held responsible for Sudan?

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