Deadline looms for Tibet protesters

Television news reports by CNN and the BBC were periodically cut during the day, and the screens went black during a live speech by the Dalai Lama carried on the networks.

China's communist government had hoped Beijing's hosting of the Aug. 8-24 Olympics would boost its popularity at home as well as its image abroad. Instead the event already has attracted the scrutiny of China's human rights record.

Thubten Samphel, a spokesman for the Dalai Lama's government, said multiple people inside Tibet had counted at least 80 corpses since the violence broke out Friday. He did not know how many of the bodies were protesters. The figures could not be independently verified because China restricts foreign media access to Tibet.

‘Discern between enemies and friends’
In Lhasa, hundreds of armed police and soldiers patrolled the streets on Sunday. Hong Kong Cable TV reported some 200 military vehicles, carrying 40 to 60 armed soldiers each, drove into the city center.

Footage showed the streets were mostly empty other than the security forces. Messages on loudspeakers warned residents to "discern between enemies and friends, maintain order" and "have a clear stand to oppose violence, maintain stability."

James Miles, a BBC correspondent in Lhasa, said troops carrying automatic rifles were "letting off the occasional shot." He said people were scared to come out of their homes for fear of being hit by a bullet.

Westerners who were told to leave Lhasa and arrived by plane in the city of Chengdu said they heard gunshots and explosions throughout Saturday and overnight.

"The worst day was yesterday. It was completely chaotic. There was running and screaming in the street," said Gerald Scott Flint, director of the medical aid group Volunteer Medics Worldwide, who had been in Lhasa four days. Flint said he could see fires burning six or more blocks away.

Tashi Wangdi, president of the Office of Tibet that represents the Dalai Lama in New York, called the departure of tourists worrisome.

"I think there will be total blackout of information to the outside world," he said. "Our worry is they will be more brutal and will use more force now."

The unrest in Tibet began March 10 on the anniversary of a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule of the region. Tibet was effectively independent for decades before communist troops entered in 1950.

The Tibetan communities living far outside what China calls modern Tibet are parts of former provinces of past Tibetan kingdoms, and many inhabitants still revere the Dalai Lama.

"We want freedom. We want the Dalai Lama to come back to this land," said a monk from Rongwo in Tongren. The monks display his pictures, though they have been ordered to remove them.

Protests spread across countryside
Inspired by the protests in Lhasa, monks and Tibetans in the town of Xiahe in Gansu province staged two days of protests, one peaceful in which they raised Tibetan national flags, the other in which government offices were smashed and police tear-gassed the crowd of more than 1,000.

Authorities clamped a curfew on Xiahe overnight. Patrols of riot police, in black uniforms, helmets and flak jackets, and armed police in green uniforms carrying batons marched through the town Sunday in groups of 10 and 20.

Smaller protests were reported in two other nearby towns, witnesses said, in both cases drawing truckloads of armed police.

In the Gansu provincial capital of Lanzhou, more than 100 Tibetan students staged a sit-down protest on a playing field at Northwest Minorities University, according to the activist group Free Tibet.

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