Beijing, China - China called on Tuesday for an international investigation of the Dalai Lama, accusing him of masterminding the violent Tibetan protests spreading across China, but the Tibetan religious leader denied those claims and invited observers to scour his office.
The Dalai Lama said he remained committed to only nonviolent demonstrations and condemned the violence that had erupted from the Tibetan protests. He said violence was “suicidal” for the Tibetan cause and threatened to resign his political post as leader of Tibet’s government-in-exile “if things become out of control.”
China’s tougher language against the Dalai Lama came on a day when both France’s foreign minister and the president of the European Parliament raised the possibility of boycotting the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in August, if not the Games. Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, said no governments had called for a boycott.
Chinese soldiers and the military police continued moving into Tibet and Tibetan regions in other provinces of Western China. Witnesses described military checkpoints on roads, and soldiers and police officers in riot gear patrolling cities jolted by protests or violence in recent days.
In Lhasa, the Tibetan capital that exploded in rioting on Friday, news agencies reported that most stores and schools in the Chinese section of the city had reopened even as the authorities kept the city’s old Tibetan quarter under tight security.
Reports continued to emerge of more violence and protests. Tibetan sympathizers said clashes occurred in two locations in Sichuan Province, one of which left four Tibetans dead. The report could not be substantiated.
For days, Chinese officials and Tibetan advocates have offered starkly conflicting estimates of the death toll from the protests, without providing proof. Chinese authorities say Tibetans brutally killed 13 innocent civilians in Lhasa. Tibet’s governor also said the Chinese paramilitary police and other security officers in Lhasa were not armed with lethal weapons and had not killed anyone..
But on Tuesday, a spokesman for Tibet’s government-in-exile said it had confirmed 99 deaths, including 80 in Lhasa, in confrontations with Chinese security officers. Pro-Tibet advocacy groups also released photographs of naked, bloody bodies that they said were Tibetan protesters who had been killed by Chinese security officers in Aba County, also known as Ngawa, a Tibetan region of Sichuan Province. Those contentions could not be independently corroborated.
An Aba resident, though, interviewed by telephone, confirmed that local officials wanted to conceal something. “Last Friday, we got a government confidential file that tells us if anyone outside asks you what happened in Aba, you should say there is nothing abnormal, Aba is now quiet,” the resident said.
Chinese state news media said Wednesday that 105 Tibetans had surrendered to the police for taking part in the protests. The Chinese government had set a deadline of midnight Monday for protesters to turn themselves in.
Popular anger and resentment coursed through the Chinese Internet. Many people expressed outrage that Western sympathies seemed tilted toward the Tibetan cause despite the violence inflicted on Chinese citizens in Lhasa. Those sentiments were also expressed in China’s state-run news media outlets.
“There have been loud cries from overseas calling for the Chinese government to exercise ‘restraint’ in handling the violence in Tibet,” wrote China Daily, the official English-language newspaper. “But the voices, intentionally or otherwise, are almost silent over the violent acts that ravaged parts of Lhasa.”
Propaganda officials were tightly controlling domestic news coverage, while also continuing to censor Internet service and periodically block telecasts of CNN or the BBC. China’s state television carried dispatches from a reporter in Lhasa emphasizing Chinese victims of Tibetan rage.
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao began the day by attacking the Dalai Lama during his annual news conference at the conclusion of the National People’s Congress. He said that “ample fact and plenty of evidence” proved the protests were “organized, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique.”
Mr. Wen defended China’s response, offering no sympathy to the Tibetan protesters. “They used extremely cruel means,” he said. “This incident has inflicted heavy loss of life and the property of the people in Lhasa.”
Later in the day, a Foreign Ministry spokesman toughened China’s line by calling for an investigation into whether the Dalai Lama incited the protests.
“What the international community should concern itself with, and should ask about, is precisely what role and function he played in this serious incident of criminal violence involving fighting, smashing, looting and arson,” the spokesman, Qin Gang, said. “The one who should be tried and investigated is the Dalai Lama himself.”
In Dharamsala, India, the home of the Tibetan government-in-exile, the Dalai Lama tried to seize the higher moral ground and at the same time poke at China’s most important aspirations when he complimented Beijing for having met three of four conditions of being a “superpower.” He said China had the world’s largest population, military prowess and a fast-developing economy.
“Fourth, moral authority, that’s lacking,” he told reporters, then for the second time in two days accused Chinese officials of a “rule of terror” in Tibet.
But the Dalai Lama also made conciliatory gestures. He condemned the burning of Chinese flags and attacks on Chinese property. He said he planned to meet Wednesday in India with a group of Tibetans who had vowed to march 900 miles from Dharamsala to Lhasa. He said he would convey his “reservations” about their effort.
This was not the first time the Dalai Lama had threatened to resign if Tibetans turned violent. His aides later clarified that even if he gave up his position as head of the government-in-exile, his post as spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism could not be altered.