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BEIJING: Troops have surrounded the three biggest monasteries in the
Tibetan capital Lhasa as fears of a severe crackdown following
protests against Chinese rule mounted, a rights group said Friday.
Chinese authorities locked down the sites after
a third day of protests in Lhasa saw hundreds of Buddhist monks
demonstrate, the International Campaign for Tibet said.
“There is an intensifying atmosphere of fear
and tension in Lhasa at the moment,” International Campaign for
Tibet spokeswoman Kate Saunders, who spoke to people in the capital,
told AFP.
The protests, believed to the biggest in Tibet
in two decades, coincided with demonstrations in India this week by
Tibetans seeking to pressure China over its rule of the Himalayan
region ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August.
The demonstrations also coincided with the
anniversary of an uprising in 1959 against Chinese rule that Tibetan
groups say was brutally crushed and led to the deaths of tens of
thousands of people.
Saunders said the initial response by Chinese
authorities to the Lhasa protests had been more muted than in the
past, although they had already begun to question monks, while other
rights groups reported protesters being detained.
“So far there is no evidence that the
authorities will depart from their standard pattern when faced with
strong dissent—repression, crackdown and re-education,” she said
from London.
In a first rebuke from a foreign government,
Canadian Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier on Thursday expressed
“serious concerns” about China’s actions.
The International Campaign for Tibet said monks
at the Sera monastery in Lhasa were on a hunger strike, while there
were also reports of the protests spreading to two remote rural
monasteries within Tibet.
Tourists have been prevented from entering the
main monasteries in Ganden, Drepung and Sera, Lhasa, the campaign
said in a statement.
A popular agency for tourists traveling to Tibet
based in neighboring Sichuan province, told AFP on Friday that
five monasteries, including the three largest in Lhasa, were all
closed to visitors.
A spokesman for the Tibet Autonomous Region, who
gave his name only as Fu, denied there had been any arrests, and
that monasteries had been surrounded, or that protests had spread to
rural Tibet. He insisted the monasteries were open to tourists. The
foreign ministry in Beijing had no immediate comment when contacted
by AFP on Friday.
On Thursday, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang
conceded there had been protests in Lhasa, but said the situation
had been “stabilized.”
Pro-Tibet groups and Amnesty International said
tear gas and electric prods had been used to disperse the initial
protests, while some monks had been detained.
In India, police on Thursday arrested 100
Tibetans who were trying to walk to Tibet in a Mahatma Gandhi-style
peaceful march.
-- AFP
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