By Ariel Lin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BEIJING, China – The largest demonstrations against the Chinese government in nearly 20 years erupted as Chinese security forces used tear-gas and gunfire to suppress protesters on Friday. Witnesses said angry Tibetan crowds burned shops, cars, military vehicles and at least one tourist bus.  Protesters appeared to be targeting shops and vehicles owned by Han Chinese, the predominant ethnic group in China.  A main market in the capital was set on fire, and some Tibetans were hospitalized with serious injuries, according to Kate Saunders, a spokeswoman for the International Campaign for Tibet.

Violence started when police tried to block a peaceful protest by monks at the Ramoche Temple on Friday, Tashi Choephel of the Tibetan Center for Human Rights told CNN. Witnesses said tanks were in the streets of the Tibetan capital Lhasa as part of a heavy security clampdown after violent riots erupted.  Several people lost their lives and many others were injured in Lhasa, an official at the city’s medical emergency centre told AFP, with Radio Free Asia reporting at least two people had been killed.

China warned Saturday it would use a firm hand to quell protests in Tibet, acknowledging seven people had been killed in unrest. It said seven people were killed in the rioting.  Most of them were business people and none were foreigners.  Independent verification of the news from the region has been difficult to verify because Chinese censors blacked out Western media reports about the developments in Tibet on Chinese television.

Chinese government also accused the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, of acting as the “mastermind” behind protests.  “The government of Tibet Autonomous Region said there had been enough evidence to prove that the recent sabotage in Lhasa was ‘organized, premeditated and masterminded’ by the Dalai clique,” Xinhua news agency said. “The violence, involving beating, smashing, looting and burning, has disrupted the public order, jeopardized people’s lives and property,” an official with the government said.

The United States, Britain and other European states expressed concern over the violence and urged both sides to show restraint.  The Dalai Lama, who heads Tibet’s government-in-exile in India, called on the Chinese leadership to “stop using force and address the long-simmering resentment of the Tibetan people through dialogue with the Tibetan people.”  He also urges the fellow Tibetans not to resort to violence and rejected allegations that he and his government-in-exile in India were behind the uprising in Lhasa.

For more information, please see:

APF – China says seven killed in Tibet – 14 March 2008

BBC – Deaths reported in Tibet protests – 14 March 2008

BBC – In pictures: Protests in Tibet – 14 March 2008

CNN – A timeline of Tibetan protests – 14 March 2008

CNN – Tibet in turmoil as riots grip capital – 14 March 2008

Press Association – Violence erupts at Tibetan protests – 14 March 2008