China acknowledges spread of Tibet protests
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- Written by Tania Branigan in Beijing and Randeep Ramesh in Dharamsala Tania Branigan in Beijing and Randeep Ramesh in Dharamsala
- Published: 20 March 2008 20 March 2008
- Hits: 4253 4253
China has acknowledged for the first time that anti-government protests have spread outside Tibet, and announced arrests following the riots in Lhasa.
The state run Xinhua news agency today reported recent unrest in Sichuan and Gansu provinces, blaming supporters of the Dalai Lama.
Thousands of armed police have flooded into the provinces and neighbouring Qinghai province amid sporadic demonstrations.
Witnesses have also reported what appear to be large military convoys - up to two kilometres long - driving towards Tibet in the last few days. One said that the men inside were armed with automatic machine guns as well as riot shields.
Markings and registration plates were removed, but the vehicles appeared to be those normally used by the People's Liberation Army rather than by paramilitary police.
The increasing concentration of security forces came as officials in Lhasa began to parade those held in custody over the disturbances.
The Tibet Daily reported that 24 people had been arrested for endangering state security and other "grave crimes" connected with the riots.
Officials also issued a wanted list of 12 people caught by security cameras during the unrest.
They said that 170 people had surrendered to police following an announcement that those who did so by Monday night would be treated leniently - while others would face harsh punishment.
Many have been shown on state-controlled Tibet Television, with two men confessing to taking part. One said he had done things he regretted because he "believed other people's rumours", while another said a crowd threatened to burn down his house if he did not join them.
The television station said detainees were remorseful and would help police to find other miscreants.
In one sequence, paramilitary police marched suspects in handcuffs, forcing one man's head to a table as he signed and fingerprinted an unidentified document at the prosecutors' office.
Rights groups are concerned that the authorities are targeting peaceful protesters as well as rioters and warn that those charged will not receive a fair trial.
Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said: "There is every reason to fear for the safety of those recently detained."
Protests against the government started peacefully in Lhasa a week and a half ago, but erupted into riots and attacks on Han Chinese and Hui Muslims last Friday.
Outside Tibet, protests have included attacks on several government buildings, but there are no independent reports of attacks on individuals or private property.
The government says 16 died in the unrest in Lhasa - including three protestors who allegedly jumped from buildings while fleeing police - while Tibetan exile groups say the tally is closer to 100 when other provinces are included, mostly because of the crackdown.
Xinhua reported protestors in Gansu and Sichuan burning down shops and attacking schools and hospitals as well as police stations, with Sichuan authorities claiming they had also beaten civilians, police and officials in Aba, known in Tibetan as Ngawa.
There was no mention of allegations from Tibetan exile groups that paramilitaries in Aba had fired on protestors, killing several.
Overseas pro-Tibet groups have released the names of alleged victims and graphic photographs of several corpses, but it has been impossible to confirm their authenticity because reporters are being prevented from travelling to the region - although they are legally entitled to do so.
Zhang Yusheng, a spokesman for the government in Gansu, said: "These sabotages were organised and premeditated, and their roots were the Dalai Clique, whose ulterior motive was to create unrest, disturb the Beijing Olympics, destroy the peace and stability and separate the country."
There were claims today that several thousand monks and lay people were protesting in Zeku county, Huangnan, Qinghai. In a substantial diminution of rhetoric they were said to be calling not for freedom but for "dialogue with the Sacred Dalai Lama, [and] the high autonomous administration of Tibet".
However, officers at Zeku county police station told the Guardian they had nothing to say, while a hotel in the county said it was not aware of disturbances.
The Chinese foreign ministry. meanwhile, said it was "seriously concerned" about a planned meeting between Gordon Brown and the Dalai Lama, and it told the prime minister not to offer him support.
The Pope also called for dialogue between the two sides, warning: "Violence does not solve problems, but only aggravates them."
But Chinese authorities have stepped up attacks on the Dalai Lama, with Tibet's Communist party chief, Zhang Qingli, telling officials they faced "a life-and-death battle" with "a wolf in monk's robes" and his followers.
The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader has denied inciting unrest and today said he was willing to meet with China's leaders, including President Hu Jintao.
Yesterday he urged activists to end a "confrontational" march to Tibet from India, fearing a clash with Chinese troops at the border.
"He made it clear he cannot order them, but he appealed to them to stop," said Tenzin Taklha, his personal secretary.
'We live in a nightmare. Death and carnage is everywhere' Ali, Baghdad resident
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- Written by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Baghdad Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Baghdad
- Published: 20 March 2008 20 March 2008
- Hits: 4291 4291
Ali is a painter and a student at the academy of art in north Baghdad. A few years ago he moved to the Baghdad suburb of Karrada, where many artists live because of its art market.
When I meet him, Ali is limping slightly. A white bandage protrudes from the sleeve of his striped jumper, and he frequently drops his left shoulder so that his arm rests on his thigh. These are the only outward signs of the injuries he sustained in the previous week.
In a shy, soft voice Ali tells me how he had been standing with a friend in Karrada when a bomb went off at the side of the road. "I heard an explosion very close by," he says. "I saw smoke and chaos and people screaming. I saw my friend Hassan, who was running and carrying a child who had lost an arm. I saw a nice-looking girl - the Karrada girls, you know how beautiful they are. She was dead. And I saw a girl who had only one eye.
"I couldn't bear it," he tells me. "I started to scream and cry.
"Then suddenly there was another explosion. This time, you know, I didn't hear much, I just saw a tall column of orange fire a few metres away from me and then smoke. I didn't know what had happened, but the people who had run over to tend the injured from the first bomb were now lying on the street screaming.
"I stood there in the middle of it all. I saw people picking bodies up and carrying them. A police car arrived and the police started to fire bullets in the air. I ran away and hid at the entrance of a shop. When a woman saw me, she started screaming. There was blood on my arm and on my leg." A friend of Ali's stopped a passing ambulance and helped him into it. Inside, he found a man whose face was black from burns and whose shoulder was covered with blood. A younger man was bleeding from his legs. "When he tried to lift one of them it bent not at the knee but from the middle of his thigh," Ali says. "He was screaming, 'Fix my leg! Fix my leg!' "
At the hospital, Ali and the others sat in a corridor waiting to be treated by the overstretched medical team. "There were children there who were all red," he remembers. "It looked as if they had no faces, they were so covered with blood."
After waiting a while he was transferred to another hospital, where a doctor examined him. "The doctor told me I just had two bits of shrapnel in my arm and leg," Ali says. "He asked me why I was crying. I told him it wasn't for myself but for all the boys and girls around me."
The doctor took out what looked like pliers and asked Ali to look away. "He got the first bullet out, but the second didn't come so easily and I screamed."
After Ali has finished telling me this story I look around at his immaculately clean apartment. On one side of the room are a pile of paintings. He points at three small ones hanging on the wall, a mixture of orange and red splashes. "These are my attempts at surrealism," he says.
"Immediately after the war, I had a strong feeling of optimism. I was sure the Saddam era wouldn't come back, we had money and were spending all the money.
"But then the conspiracy theories started. I began hearing my brothers and friends say the Americans were here only for the oil, and after that I would go to bed and lie awake thinking how much oil they were stealing from me. Now I don't care if they steal the money, I am so tired."
"I ask myself why life in Iraq is so cheap. We are living in a nightmare. It is like there is a camera recording us and by its light we see images of death and carnage everywhere. The Iraqi have good hearts, but we are living in a state of hysteria."
This is Ali's second apartment. His first was blown up. On a mobile phone he shows me grainy video footage of smoke mixed with broken furniture. There are some muffled sounds and then I make out someone shouting: "Are you OK? This is a mortar. We're getting shelled."
In fact it was a car bomb, Ali says.
He shared that flat with two other friends, Mamdouh and Sarmad. "They were the best people in the world. Mamdouh and I would listen to [the Arab singer] Fairuz and paint all night.
"The night before that bomb, Mamdouh told me he felt guilty he hadn't done any work for so long. He told me he would go out for breakfast early in the morning.
"I stayed in the flat, sleeping. Then I heard the first explosion. It was at the end of the street. I went to the window to look, and then as I was walking back the second bomb went of, just under my window."
Emotional
As Ali ran down the stairs, he saw someone who lived on the first floor wrapped in a blanket. He was dead. "I asked if anyone had seen Mamdouh and Sarmad. They told me no one had seen them. I was crying in the street . A few hours later a friend called me and told me that Sarmad was dead and Mamdouh was in hospital."
Ali went to the hospital. His eyes and voice are calm - as usual - while he recounts the scene. "He was lying on a bed there in the Kindi hospital, there was a filthy smell all around, the smell of urine. He looked like Mamdouh, but he was like someone else ... he smiled and I smiled back, but I felt a great pain in my heart." Two days later, Ali tells me, Mamdouh died.
"We came, his friends, me and Hassan and Hadi, and washed him and put him in a shroud. You know I am too emotional. I cry very quickly. For six months I didn't talk to anyone, I was just sad and silent.
Ali loves Arabic calligraphy and has studied it for many years. Now, he says, all he writes are the black mourning signs for his dead friends, which, according to Iraqi custom, he hangs in the street.
Middle East peace talks stalled, say negotiators
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- Written by Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem, The Guardian Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem, The Guardian
- Published: 20 March 2008 20 March 2008
- Hits: 4474 4474
· Palestinians see no hope of change on the ground
· Effort to isolate Hamas has backfired, says thinktank (or it went according to Israel's plan . . .)
Peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians are stalled and are unlikely to produce a significant agreement within the year, a growing number of voices in the Middle East are warning.
Saab Erekat, a senior Palestinian negotiator, admitted yesterday that his side had failed to convince the Palestinians that the current peace process would bring any change on the ground. At the same time, the International Crisis Group thinktank said efforts to isolate Hamas in Gaza were "bankrupt" and had backfired, damaging the credibility of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who is leading the peace talks.
"The peace process is at a standstill," the group said in a report.
A Middle East Regime Needing Change
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- Written by Patrick Seale Patrick Seale
- Published: 19 March 2008 19 March 2008
- Hits: 3041 3041
So it was back to regime change! As if nothing had happened since 2003! As if the catastrophic war in Iraq had not demonstrated the bankruptcy of the neocon fantasy of using American power to overthrow and ‘reform’ Arab regimes to make the Middle East safe for Israel and the United States.
If the region is to be spared another disastrous explosion of violence, one might argue, the one regime that urgently needs changing is that of Olmert and his Defence Minister, Ehud Barak.
Apartheid looks like this
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- Written by Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada
- Published: 19 March 2008 19 March 2008
- Hits: 4547 4547
The scene: a military checkpoint deep in Palestinian territory in the West Bank. A tall, thin elderly man, walking stick in hand, makes a detour past the line of Palestinians, many of them young men, waiting obediently behind concrete barriers for permission from an Israeli soldier to leave one Palestinian area, the city of Nablus, to enter another Palestinian area, the neighbouring village of Huwara. The long queue is moving slowly, the soldier taking his time to check each person's papers.
The old man heads off purposefully down a parallel but empty lane
reserved for vehicle inspections. A young soldier controlling the human
traffic spots him and orders him back in line. The old man stops, fixes
the soldier with a stare and refuses. The soldier looks startled, and
uncomfortable at the unexpected show of defiance. He tells the old man
more gently to go back to the queue. The old man stands his ground.
After a few tense moments, the soldier relents and the old man passes.