China says using restraint to quell Tibet unrest

By Chris Buckley and Lindsay Beck

BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Monday it had shown great restraint in the face of violent protests by Tibetans, which it said were orchestrated by followers of the Dalai Lama seeking to wreck the Beijing Olympics in August.

But even as the governor of Tibet said no guns were used against protesters in the regional capital, Lhasa, troops poured into neighboring areas to enforce control after violent ethnic Tibetan protests.

And Lhasa counted down to a midnight deadline for protesters to give themselves up or face tougher punishment.

The developments underscore how, even as China asserts iron control, the violence will hang over the country, with foreign protests, pleas for leniency and China's crackdown weighing uncomfortably on the build-up to the Games.

Tibet governor Qiangba Puncog said the protests were ignited by supporters of the Dalai Lama just for that end.

"This time a tiny handful of separatists and lawless elements engaged in extreme acts with the goal of generating even more publicity to wreck stability during this crucial period of the Olympic Games -- over 18 years of hard-won stability," he said.

An ethnic Tibetan in Sichuan's Aba prefecture said fresh protests flared near two Tibetan schools on Monday, with hundreds of students facing off against police and troops.

The resident, who asked not be identified, said 18 people, including Buddhist monks and students, were killed when troops opened fire with guns on Sunday. Earlier a policeman was burnt to death, he said. His account could not be immediately verified.

Exiled representatives of Tibet in Dharamsala, India, on Sunday put the protest death toll at 80.

But Qiangba Puncog said only 13 "innocent civilians" had been killed and dozens of security personnel injured in Lhasa when several days of monk-led protests broadened into riots in which houses and shops were burned and looted on Friday.

"I can say with all responsibility we did not use lethal weapons, including opening fire," he said in Beijing, adding that only tear gas and water cannon had been used to quell the region's worst protests in nearly two decades.

He said three fleeing rioters had jumped from roofs, but gave no other details about the fate of protesters possibly killed or arrested. "We will handle this strictly according to the law," he said, vowing severe punishment for the worst rioters.

Peng Xiaobo, who sells clothes in Lhasa, told state television that seven family members were forced to leap from an upper floor when a mob set his ground-floor shop on fire.

His uncle and cousin were burnt to death, while his wife suffered serious injuries, CCTV said. "My cousin only turned 18 in December. She didn't dare jump when the stairs below were burning," Peng said in tears.

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 and set up a government-in-exile in Dharamsala. Beijing reviles him as a separatist though he says he only wants more autonomy for the region, which Communist troops entered in 1950. The last major rioting in Tibet was in 1989.

MIDNIGHT DEADLINE

Tibet is one of several potential flashpoints for the ruling Communist party at a time of heightened attention on China ahead of the Olympic Games.

The government is worried about inflation and wealth gaps eroding social stability, and this month it said it had foiled two plots by the members of the Muslim Uighur population in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, including one seeking to disrupt the Olympics.

Residents contacted in Lhasa said the city was under tight police watch ahead of a Monday midnight deadline for protesters to give themselves up. Qiangba Puncog said calm was returning.

Foreign reporters are barred from traveling to Tibet without official permission and tourists have been asked to leave. Over a dozen Hong Kong journalists were forced out of Lhasa on Monday after being accused of illegal reporting.

The Tibetan "government-in-exile" in northern India said armed police were carrying out house-to-house searches in Lhasa and had arrested former "political prisoners" in the clampdown.

In Aba, two ethnic Tibetans said hundreds of People's Liberation Army vehicles moved in overnight after unrest in which police said a crowd of protesters had hurled petrol bombs, torching a police station and a market.

Matt Whitticase, spokesman for the London-based Free Tibet Campaign, said a monk in Aba saw members of the People's Armed Police dropping from helicopters.

In Machu, in the province of Gansu, a crowd of 300-400 carried pictures of the Dalai Lama as they marched on government buildings, breaking windows and doors and setting fire to Chinese shops and businesses, the Free Tibet Campaign said.

Speaking from his home in India's Himalayan foothills on Sunday, the Dalai Lama called for an investigation into what he called cultural genocide in Tibet.

Xinhua news agency quoted Tibetan officials as saying the charge was "downright nonsense".