TIBET TO STAY ON OLYMPIC TORCH ROUTE DESPITE RIOTS
03.24.08 - Leído 44 veces. Enviar esta notaNick Mulvenney and Lindsay Beck
China vowed to take the Olympic torch to Tibet despite deadly riots there and warned against international protests over its crackdown in the Himalayan region that are certain to dog the run-up to the Games
BEIJING, China; March 24, 2008.- “The situation in Tibet has essentially stabilised, the Olympic torch relay will proceed as scheduled,” Jiang Xiaoyu, executive vice president of the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, told a news conference.
The crackdown in Tibet and nearby provinces, following riots that may have killed dozens of people, have sparked calls for a boycott of the August Beijing Games that China wants to turn into a celebration of its emergence as a world power.
But protests over Tibet are likely mar the torch relay as it travels through 19 cities outside China on its 97,000-km journey around the world in April.
“We hold the opinion that those activities (international protests) are a challenge to the Olympic Charter, a challenge to all those who love the Olympic movement around the world,” Jiang said.
“Those activities will not win the hearts and minds of people and are doomed to failure. The message we are trying to convey through the torch relay is peace, friendship and harmony.”
China accuses the exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhists, the Dalai Lama, of orchestrating the monk-led protests and rioting — the most serious in the Himalayan region for nearly two decades — to try to wreck the Aug. 8-24 Games.
“The Dalai is a jackal in Buddhist monk’s robes, an evil spirit with a human face and the heart of a beast,” Tibet’s Communist Party secretary, Zhang Qingli, told a teleconference of regional officials, according to the China Tibet News.
“We are engaged in a fierce battle of blood and fire with the Dalai clique, a life-and-death struggle between the foe and us”.
In a move almost certain to irritate Beijing, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he would meet the Dalai Lama during a visit to Britain expected in May.
Brown said Chinese Premier Wen Jiaobao had told him on Wednesday that Wen was prepared to talk with the Dalai Lama under certain conditions.
The spiritual leader denies he masterminded the protests — which culminated last Friday in a riot in the capital of Tibet, Lhasa — from his base in the Indian town of Dharamsala.
He insists he only wants greater autonomy for his homeland, not independence from China.
His government-in-exile says 99 people died when Chinese security forces moved to quell the riot. Beijing says at least 16 died, mostly “innocent” civilians.
The official China News Service reported that 160 Lhasa rioters had so far given themselves up to the authorities. The Tibet government set a deadline of midnight Monday for those involved to surrender or face harsh punishment.
BOYCOTT TALK
The authorities, keen to stamp out the unrest quickly and restore stability in western China before the Olympics, have blocked foreigners from Tibet and nearby ethnic Tibetan areas.
Foreigners travelling in western Sichuan province on Wednesday were taken off a public bus at a police check-point at Yajiang, a village on a major highway leading to Lhasa, and sent on a mini-bus to Kangding, a city further east.
“It is closed to all foreigners and tourists. There is nothing to see now, but you’re welcome to come back some other time,” a police officer at the check-point in Yajiang said.
BBC television showed what it said was footage of rioting in a town in Gansu province, which neighbours Tibet, on Tuesday, the same day Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told a news conference in Beijing that the protests had been quelled.
The video, which the BBC said was filmed by a Canadian crew, showed hundreds of Tibetans — including some monks — on foot and on horseback making for the government compound, where they pulled down a Chinese flag and raised a Tibetan one in its place.
In a commentary, the BBC said the horsemen were backed up later by 50 to 60 men on motorbikes and that, altogether, some 700 families from villages in the surrounding countryside joined the two-hour rioting before government reinforcements arrived.
CHINA HEADACHES
The protests add to China’s headaches ahead of the Olympics.
Inflation is surging after years of breakneck growth, threatening social stability in a country of 1.3 billion where the gap between rich and poor is becoming more extreme.
It also fears attacks by pro-independence Uighur militants in the remote Muslim region of Xinjiang, and faces mounting criticism of pollution that chokes Beijing.
Tibetan activists demonstrated outside the International Olympic Committee’s headquarters in Lausanne on Tuesday, demanding the torch relay skip Tibet.
The relay, which starts when it is lit in Ancient Olympia, Greece, next Monday, is scheduled to visit Tibet twice.
When the flame arrives in Beijing on March 31 before embarking on its journey around the world, a second torch will be lit and taken to Tibet, where Chinese climbers will attempt to take it to the top of Mount Everest. The attempt will take place in early May whenever the weather conditions on the world’s tallest mountain are most suitable.
Tibet is also on the domestic leg of the relay in June.
(Reuters)
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