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BEIJING: China said Wednesday at least 660 people had
surrendered
over deadly protests in and near Tibet as French President Nicolas
Sarkozy raised the prospect of boycotting the Beijing Olympics
opening ceremony.
More than 280 people had given
themselves up to authorities following deadly protests in the
Tibetan capital Lhasa against Chinese rule, the state-run Xinhua
news agency said.
Meanwhile in Ngawa, a region in
Sichuan province in southwest China next to Tibet, 381 people
involved in recent clashes had also handed themselves over to
police, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported.
“Most of those who have come
forward are ordinary people and monks who were deceived or
coerced,” said Shu Tao, a local Communist Party chief, according
to the China Daily.
Lhasa prosecutors had also issued
arrest warrants for 29 people allegedly involved in a protest that
broke out in the Tibetan capital on March 14, while the police
already issued a “most-wanted” list of 53 people, Xinhua said.
Tibet’s government-in-exile has
said 140 people had been killed in the unrest over the past two
weeks in Tibet and neighboring areas with large Tibetan populations,
while China reported there had been 20 deaths.
The protests against Beijing’s
rule of Tibet began in Lhasa on March 10 to mark the anniversary of
a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule in the region, but it
quickly turned bloody and spilled over into other parts of the
country with the Chinese authorities accused of heavy-handedness in
its repression of the demonstrations.
The unrest comes at a delicate
time for the Chinese authorities with the Beijing Olympic Games less
than five months away and the eyes of the world on the booming Asian
giant.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy
left open Tuesday the possibility of boycotting the Beijing Olympics
opening ceremony over China’s crackdown.
Sarkozy, who arrives in Britain
for a two-day visit on Wednesday, said “all options are open”
regarding a boycott. He appealed to the “sense of
responsibility” of China’s leaders over the unrest.
The president’s aides specified
that France was still considering the possibility of snubbing the
opening ceremony, but ruled out boycotting the entire Games.
Other countries remained firmly
against any boycott, with the White House saying US President George
W. Bush still planned to be present for the August 8 opening of the
Olympics.
Independent verification of the
figures was made extremely difficult by a Chinese decision to bar
foreign reporters from traveling to areas affected by the unrest.
However, a first group of about a
dozen selected foreign journalists was scheduled to begin a guided
three-day tour to Lhasa Wednesday.
Against the backdrop of tight
control of the foreign media’s movement in and near Tibet, Chinese
citizens voiced anger at what they considered unfair reporting by
overseas media.
Chinese students abroad set up a
website, www.anti-cnn.com, to collect evidence of “one-sided and
untrue” foreign reporting, blasting “the Western Goebbels’
Nazi media,” according to the China Daily, in reference to German
dictator Hitler’s propaganda minister.
--AFP
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