BEIJING (AFP) — Two weeks of protests against China's rule of Tibet have left about 130 people dead, an exiled Tibetan leader said Monday as the unrest cast a shadow over the lighting of the Olympic torch.
Amid the controversy, China called for the world to unite in opposition to any campaigns linking the Beijing Games to Tibet or any other political issue, as it maintained a lockdown of the areas where protests have taken place.
However, three protesters briefly disrupted the torch-lighting ceremony in Greece, charging forward during a speech by China's top Olympic official and unfurling a banner reading "Boycott the country that tramples on human rights."
It was not immediately clear whether they were protesting China's actions in Tibet.
Tibet's prime minister-in-exile, Samdhong Rinpoche, said from his base in Dharamshala, India that about 130 people had been confirmed killed in a Chinese crackdown on the protests, up from a figure of 99 given last week.
The protests began in Tibet's capital Lhasa on March 10 to mark the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against China's rule of the Himalayan region.
The protests turned violent four days later in Lhasa, with Tibetan rioters killing 19 innocent civilians and one policeman, according to the government in Beijing.
Protests then spread to other areas of China with ethnic Tibetan populations.
The ensuing crackdown has come under criticism because foreign reporters and other independent monitors have been barred from the hotspot areas, amid reports of a massive military build-up.
Beijing has repeatedly accused the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, of masterminding the protests, saying the unrest was a deliberate campaign to sabotage the Games set for August.
The Tibet issue was also the focus in Greece where the Olympic torch was lit -- an event broadcast live around the world from Olympia, where the ancient Olympics were born in 776 BC.
International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said at the ceremony that there was no world support for a boycott of the Beijing Games over the deadly Tibetan unrest.
"The major political leaders don't want a boycott. There is no momentum for a boycott," he said.
However, the potential for Chinese embarrassment along the globe-circling torch relay route was underlined by the protesters in Olympia.
One of them tried to grab a microphone from Beijing Games organising committee chairman Liu Qi as he gave a speech, shouting "Freedom! Freedom!", before security hauled him and two others away.
The Olympic flame is scheduled to pass over Mount Everest in Tibet in early May, and through Lhasa the following month.
The torch's journey is expected to spark a wave of global protests against Chinese authorities over Tibet and a range of other issues, such as Beijing's record on human rights and religious freedoms.
China's official Xinhua news agency published a commentary on Monday calling for global opposition to such campaigns.
"In the run-up to the Games, the international community, true sports lovers and opponents of violence...must stand fast against any attempt to undermine the Olympics," it said.
Meanwhile China showed no signs of buckling to calls for independent monitoring of the crackdown.
Foreign reporters remained banned from entering Lhasa. China has also kept a tight lid across a huge swathe of land bordering Tibet and nearby.
An AFP reporter in western Sichuan province who saw a huge military build-up in the area on Sunday was prevented from moving out of the town of Kangding into Tibetan-populated regions on Monday.
The region is just outside the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Region and about 200 kilometres (120 miles) south of Ngawa county, where Buddhist monks and other Tibetans clashed with police last week.
In neighbouring Qinghai province, an AFP reporter on Sunday was turned back at a police checkpoint while trying to reach the town of Tongren, site of a significant Tibetan Buddhist monastery where protests had been reported.
Activist groups reported sporadic protests over the weekend in Qinghai and Gansu provinces.
The Free Tibet Campaign, citing an eyewitness, said around 200 monks and 800 others marched 25 kilometres to a monastery on Saturday chanting for the return of the Dalai Lama and for a free Tibet.
It said many people had fled into the mountains fearing arrest.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
