Paramilitaries open fire on hundreds of monks and nuns at Tibet rally

Jane Macartney
London Times
Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Paramilitary police opened fire on hundreds of monks, nuns and Tibetans who tried to march on a local government office in western China yesterday to demand the return of the Dalai Lama.

Residents of Luhuo said that a monk and a farmer appeared to have been killed and about a dozen people wounded in the latest violence in Tibetan areas of China. Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, said that one officer was killed when police confronted a “lawless mob” in Luhuo.

The demonstration began at 4pm when about 200 nuns from Woge nunnery and a similar number of monks from Jueri monastery marched towards the Luhuo Third District government office. They were joined by several hundred farmers and nomads, witnesses said.

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Shouting “Long Live the Dalai Lama” and “Tibet belongs to Tibetans”, they approached the office. The paramilitary People’s Armed Police appeared and ordered the crowd to turn back. Witnesses said that shots were fired and two people appeared to have died. They identified one as Congun Dengzhu, a farmer, and the second as an unknown monk.

Security was already tight in Luhuo county, as in other Tibetan communities in China. The turmoil began with a riot in Lhasa on March 15, in which Chinese officials say 19 people were killed when Tibetans rampaged through the Tibetan capital, stabbing ethnic Han Chinese and setting fire to Chinese shops and offices.

The latest demonstration, in a remote corner of a province that abuts Tibet and has a mainly Tibetan population, came after the authorities in Lhasa issued their Number Eight list of those most wanted in connection with the violence.

The new list, issued by the Tibetan Autonomous Region Public Security Bureau rather than by Lhasa city authorities, of eight people brought the number of those now being sought to 53. State-run television has been showing grainy photographs of those who are wanted, which have been taken from video footage and photographs that were taken during the riot on March 15.

The man whose picture appeared as number 52 on the list features in one of the most well-known images from that day of violence, in which a group of Tibetans can be seen setting light to a Chinese flag while a young man in Tibetan dress and carrying a machete-type knife stands in the background.

Full article here.

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