Update on a series of previous posts here on BB about pro-Tibetan-independence protests in Lhasa: violence grew dramatically today.
Snip from report issued today by the US-government-funded news agency RFA, which has correspondents on the ground in Tibet:
“We saw two dead at Ramoche temple, two in the garden, two at the Ganden printing house, and those Tibetans who went to take food to prisoners in Drapchi prison saw 26 Tibetans shot after they were brought in on a black vehicle,” one Tibetan witness said. “There could be about 80 dead, or more, but there is too much commotion here to give an exact number.”
“Several buildings owned by Chinese immigrants and Chinese Muslim immigrants were set on fire,” the witness said. “All those shops owned by Chinese were ransacked and burned. Tibetan shop owners were told to mark their shops with scarves.”
Another source said Ramoche monastery, which has about 110 resident monks, was badly damaged after Tibetans were found running in the area carrying photos of the Dalai Lama and shouting “Independence for Tibet.’”
Link.
Snip from a related report on AP, which references the RFA item:
At a demonstration outside the United Nations in New York, Psurbu Tsering of the Tibetan Association of New York and New Jersey said its members received phone calls from Tibet claiming 70 people had been killed and 1,000 arrested. The reports could not be verified.
And snip from a related NYT story:
In the past, China has not hesitated to crush major protests in Tibet or to jail disobedient monks. President Hu Jintao, who is also the general secretary of the Communist Party, served as party boss in Tibet during a violent crackdown against protests in 1989. His support for the bloody suppression of unrest that year earned him the good will of Deng Xiaoping, then the paramount leader, and led directly to his elevation to the Politburo Standing Committee and eventually to China’s top leadership posts.
Image: A man lies injured in the street during street protests today in the “Old Tibetan” neighborhood of Lhasa. (AP Photo)
Update: regular BB discussion participant Takuan points us to this page on the website of Tibet’s government in exile (based in Northern India), which lists ways that concerned people might help the people of Tibet.
Update 2: Tibetans in other parts of the world, and their supporters, are also demonstrating in support of cultural, spiritual, and political sovereignty this week.
There are reports from Nepal that 12 monks were injured during protests in Kathmandu.
Some Tibetans in Northern India are attempting to march over the Himalayas, into Tibet. Yingsel Rangzen from Students for a Free Tibet sends these photos, and says, “This movement is happening on many, many fronts.”
The group Los Angeles Friends for Tibet has an audio report (and text transcripts) with first-person accounts of the protest/pilgrimage, which led to 100 arrests. MP3 Link, Word doc, PDF. (thanks, Christal)
Update 3: Christal Smith, who produces a radio show called The Tibet Connection, passes along this (unconfirmed) statement from a fellow pro-Tibet activist named Ngawang Norbu:
There was a phone call to my tenant from Lhasa today at 9:00pm saying
more then three hundred people were already killed by Chinese troop
and they were mostly monks from Sera and Drepung Monastery. Sound of
gunshots were heard non stop. Right now Lhasa is like a war zone.
Previously on BB: