BEIJING — China struggled to regain control of its Tibetan regions yesterday, evicting all foreigners and sending in paramilitary forces to crush the huge protests that have been sweeping across the mountainous area for more than a week.
Chinese leaders launched a fresh volley of verbal attacks on the Dalai Lama, with the Communist Party chief in Tibet, Zhang Qingli, telling his officials yesterday that “the Dalai is a jackal in Buddhist monk's robes, an evil spirit with a human face and the heart of a beast.”
“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,” he said, according to a Chinese news agency.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, speaking to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao by telephone, called for restraint and an end to the violence. He said Mr. Wen told him China is willing to hold talks with the Dalai Lama, although the offer was subject to conditions that in the past have never been met to the satisfaction of the Chinese side.
Tibetan demonstrators participate in a peace march in Katmandu, Nepal, Wednesday. (Saurabh Das/Associated Press)
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The Tibetan protests are the biggest and most violent in almost 20 years. China says the protests have killed 16 people, while Tibetan activists say almost 100 have been killed by Chinese security forces.
China intensified its crackdown yesterday, deploying new security forces and setting up roadblocks across the vast Tibetan regions in the Himalayas. Foreign tourists and journalists were expelled, while authorities ordered Tibetan university students in Beijing to fill out questionnaires about “the place of the Dalai Lama in your heart.”
The questionnaires, which asked the students to promise not to participate in any demonstrations or political activities, were aimed at forcing the students to renounce their allegiance to the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.
New evidence emerged of fierce protests against Chinese rule in the Tibetan regions of Western China this week. The dramatic video footage, shot by a CTV cameraman, showed hundreds of Tibetan protesters, many on horseback, sweeping into a town in Gansu province, where they tore down the Chinese flag at a school and replaced it with a Tibetan flag. The protesters, shouting “Free Tibet” and shaking their fists, were dispersed with tear gas after paramilitary forces arrived.
In another Tibetan region yesterday, soldiers and police surrounded a monastery, preventing Buddhist monks from entering or leaving. “I think there are more than 200 armed police and soldiers here,” a witness told The Globe and Mail in a telephone interview from Luqu county, on the border of Gansu and Sichuan provinces.
“The town has been cordoned off since March 15, and people are not allowed to go out on the street,” he said. “All the stores and restaurants are closed. We are thinking about how to supply food to the monks.”
In Litang, a Tibetan town in Sichuan, witnesses said the town is occupied by thousands of soldiers. “All of the people are told to stay home,” a local student said. “Nobody goes onto the street. I haven't been to school since Monday.”
In Lhasa, where the protests began on March 10, three Tibetan monasteries have been surrounded by riot police for more than a week. The monks in the monasteries are reported to be suffering from a lack of food and water.
China has reportedly detained close to 1,000 Tibetans in Lhasa alone in recent days. Human-rights activists warned yesterday that the detainees could face torture.
“The exclusion of independent monitors and the expulsion of foreign media from Tibet suggest that China wants to retaliate against these protesters unfettered by global scrutiny,” Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement yesterday.
To tighten its grip, Beijing has deployed elite combat units, equipped with the latest models of armoured vehicles, according to a report yesterday by Kanwa Defense Review, a Toronto-based military journal.
The journal said the units are using T92 armoured vehicles with 25-millimetre machine guns. “These have never been deployed in China's armed police before,” it said.
“To cover up the involvement of regular armed forces in the crackdown, all of the armoured vehicles are using a piece of white cloth to cover the traditional red-star mark of the People's Liberation Army, and the red stars on the steel helmets of the troops were also erased,” the report added.
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