Tibet capital 'sealed off'
2008-03-29 19:11
Beijing - Chinese security forces sealed
off parts of Lhasa on Saturday and Tibet's government-in-exile
said it was investigating reports of fresh protests, weeks after
the city was shaken by an anti-government riot.
The reports coincided with a visit by a group of diplomats,
who were led on a closely guarded tour of the city that has been
at the heart of unrest throughout China's ethnic Tibetan regions
just months before the opening of the Beijing Olympics.
"We don't know how many people, but it seems it's quite a
lot of people," Tenzin Taklha, a spokesperson for the Dalai Lama
said of the events in Lhasa. "I think it's timed with the visit
of the diplomats."
The London-based International Campaign for Tibet said it
had heard from three sources that security forces had surrounded
Lhasa's main temples, Jokhang and Ramoche.
"The whole area has been shut down," the group's
spokesperson, Kate Saunders, said by telephone.
The trouble in the remote, mountain region that China's
Communist troops entered in 1950 began with a series of
peaceful, monk-led protests that culminated in a riot in Lhasa
on March 14.
Protests have since hit other Tibetan areas of
China.