Rioting erupted in a province neighboring Tibet Sunday, two days after violent protests by Tibetans against Chinese rule in Lhasa that the region's exiled representatives said had killed 80 people. “They've gone crazy,” said a police officer in Aba county, Sichuan, one of four provinces with large Tibetan populations, her voice trembling down the telephone even as the main government building there came under siege. Security forces fired tear gas and arrested five people. The Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy said on a web site that paramilitary police shot and killed at least seven protesters. A police officer, reached by telephone, denied this. One ethnic Tibetan resident in Aba said there were loud sounds like gunshots and there was widespread talk of 10 or more dead. “Now it's very tense. There are police going around everywhere, checking and looking over people for injuries,” said another resident of Aba, adding that many of the rioters were students of a Tibetan-language high school. The new disturbances came as the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet and Nobel peace laureate who fled to India in 1959, called for an investigation into whether cultural genocide – intentional or not – was taking place in his homeland. “The Tibet nation is facing serious danger. Whether China's government admits or not, there is a problem,” the Dalai Lama, who is reviled by Beijing as a separatist, told reporters in Dharamsala, his base in northern India's Himalayan foothills. Meanwhile, anti-riot troops locked down Lhasa – a remote city high in the Himalayas barred to foreign journalists without permission and now sealed off to tourists – to prevent a repeat of Friday's violence, the most serious in nearly two decades. The spasm of Tibetan anger at the Chinese presence in the region came after days of peaceful protests by monks and dealt a sharp blow to Beijing's preparations for the Olympic Games. – Agencies in August, when China wants to showcase prosperity and unity. The government-in-exile in Dharamsala said 80 people had died in the clashes between the authorities and protesters last week, and 72 had been injured. The official Xinhua news agency said only that 10 “innocent civilians” had died, mostly in fires lit by rioters, and that 12 policemen had been seriously injured. Tibet is one of several potential flashpoints for the ruling Communist Party at a time of heightened attention on China. The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said in an e-mail that monks of the Amdo Ngaba Kirti monastery, also in Sichuan's Aba prefecture, had raised the banned Tibetan flag and shouted pro-independence slogans after prayers Sunday. Chinese security forces stormed the monastery, fired tear gas and prevented the monks from taking to the streets, it said. The authorities have set rioters in Lhasa an ultimatum, urging them to hand themselves in to police by Monday midnight and gain possible clemency, or face harsh punishment. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a statement, urged Beijing to “release monks and others who have been detained solely for the peaceful expression of their views”. The Dalai Lama, who says he only wants greater autonomy for his people, said China deserved to host the Olympics but the international community had a “moral responsibility” to remind China to be a good host for the Aug. 8-24 Games. Monks first took to the streets of Tibet last Monday to mark the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising, and protests soon spread to adjoining regions inhabited by pockets of Tibetans. __
