China: Tibet Protests Prompt Heightened Security
BEIJING — Rock-wielding Tibetan separatists who attacked police stations are responsible for sparking last week's deadly violence in Sichuan, the Chinese government said Wednesday in its first detailed account of the unrest.
The government-run China Daily newspaper quoted extensively from a Sichuan government statement that said two Tibetan rioters were killed and 24 police and firefighters were injured in two clashes. The account differs from those of Tibetan support groups outside the country who say police fired on protesters in three separate areas, killing at least six Tibetans.
According to the report, the Sichuan government said the first violence broke out Jan. 23 in Luhuo county when a group of separatists armed with rocks, batons and blades marched along a street shouting 'Tibetan independence' before trying to storm a police station.
It said the rioters attacked police cars, broke the windows of the police station and tried to steal guns from armed police officers.
The paper quoted the government as saying "the officers were forced to take actions to defend themselves according to the law."
"No country governed by law would tolerate such violence directed against police and aimed at separating the country," it said.
By the government's account, 10 officers and firefighters were injured and one rioter was killed in the first incident.
The next day in Sichuan's Seda county, it said, another group attacked a police station with molotov cocktails. It said one rioter was killed "after the police fought back." The report didn't say if police opened fire.
"Evidence shows that the violent attacks ... were long plotted by separatist forces," the paper quoted the government as saying.
The article also said separatists have been trying to stir up unrest in the area and have "asked and encouraged monks to commit suicide by self-immolation."
For the past year, self-immolations have become a striking form of protest in the region. At least 16 monks, nuns and former clergy set themselves on fire after chanting for Tibetan freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama, who fled to India amid an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.
This is the region's most violent period since 2008, when deadly rioting in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, spread to Tibetan areas in adjoining provinces. China responded by flooding the area with troops and closing Tibetan regions entirely to foreigners for about a year. Special permission is still required for non-Chinese visitors to Tibet, and the Himalayan region remains closed off entirely for the weeks surrounding the March 14 anniversary of the riots that left 22 people dead.
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01/31/12 10:59 PM ET Associated Press