The past week's protest against Chinese rule turned violent again Saturday when thousands of people, some carrying the banned Tibetan flag, attacked a police station in Xiahe, China. Early Saturday morning, several hundred Tibetan monks gathered outside the Labrang Monastery in Xiahe for a procession that was met by heavy police resistance. In Tibet's capital, Lhasa, rioting and looting of Chinese owned businesses were met with police resistance that left at least ten dead, according to officials. A spokesman for the Tibetan government-in-exile claims at least eighty were killed on Friday alone. The AFP says seven were shot dead by police in Sechuan. A regional government official denies the shooting and claims the Chinese paramilitary groups and riot police are showing remarkable restraint. Armed patrols have since sealed off Buddhist monasteries. Similar uprisings against Chinese rule are spreading to the neighbouring provinces of Gansu, Sechuan and Quinghai. Tibet's governor has called upon the protesters to stop by Monday midnight or face severe punishment. However, the Dalai Lama said he would not ask the protesters to respect the deadline and instead accused China of "cultural genocide."
The toD verdict: Tibet and Xinjiang are the only two provinces in China where foreign media is denied access without government permission. Both provinces harbour culturally distinct groups of people vying to preserve a way of life threatened by Chinese policy. In the lead up to the Olympics in August, Beijing is doing its best to silence those voices.
China's rule over the largely Muslim Xinjiang is in many ways just as controversial and troubled as that over Tibet, but the issue receives must less international attention. Tibet's present communist party head, Zhang Qingli, held a series of key posts in the Xinjiang between 1999 and 2005. During his time in Xinjiang ,Zhang was credited with introducing tough polices to suppress any opposition to Chinese rue. In Xinjiang's capital Urumqi, Chinese authorities arrested15 people and killed another two in a raid against an ostensible Uighur terrorist group this past January. Last May, China's official media quoted Zhang as warning that the Dalai Lama was joining forces with what he called separatists in Xinjiang and Taiwan - as well as democracy activists and the banned Falun Gong religious groups - to "split the motherland."
With the Olympics approaching, Beijing is finding itself in a difficult position between the image it wants to project and the image it generates. Indeed, the development of human rights and free press, conditions which China agreed upon in order to host the 2008 Olympics, have yet to materialise.
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Serbs mob UN convoys
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