At least two people have died in fresh protests in a Tibetan part of western China, reports said today, as authorities made arrests in Tibet's capital Lhasa in an effort to reassert control over the region.
State media said one police officer was killed and the exiled Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy reported one Tibetan protester shot dead and another critically hurt after unrest in Sichuan's Ganzi (Garze) Tibetan Prefecture.
A Tibetan exile shouts slogans during an indefinite hunger strike in India
"The police were forced to fire warning shots, and dispersed the lawless mobsters," the brief Xinhua news agency report said, without mentioning any deaths of protesters, who it said attacked with rocks and knives.
The latest news of unrest and arrests comes after protesters seeking to put pressure on China tried to disrupt the Beijing Olympic Games torch lighting ceremony in Greece, an act that Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang called "disgraceful".
Beijing had hoped the torch's journey around the world and through China would be a symbol of confident national unity ahead of the Games, which open on August 8th. Instead, it is caught in a war of words with the Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism's spiritual leader, and his supporters.
Beijing has accused the Nobel Peace Prize-winning monk of masterminding monk-led marches in Lhasa and then an anti-Chinese riot there in mid-March, which authorities say killed 19.
Since then, Tibetan parts of western China have seen ongoing protests, despite a massive influx of police and troops.
The 72-year-old Dalai Lama denies that he is behind the unrest and his government-in-exile says 140 people have died in the violence.
"While we have confirmed information on the death toll from the demonstrations so far, it has been extremely difficult to get the details due to all the restrictions that have been imposed by Chinese authorities,"a statement from the Tibetan government-in-exile said.
"As the demonstrations continue to spread vastly to many areas in Tibet, the number of people who have died from the brutal military and police suppression during the peaceful demonstrations is astounding," the statement said.
China's authorities, which entered Tibet in 1950, have barred foreign journalists from the remote, mountain region, making the competing claims difficult to independently check.
In Lhasa, 13 people were arrested for a March 10th protest, the
Tibet Dailyreported, the first announcement of consequences for those involved in that largely peaceful march.
Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch said the arrests of apparently peaceful protesters marked a turn in the security crackdown in Tibet towards political targets. "This official account gives credence to the fact that the protests in Lhasa started peacefully, and only in subsequent days, after repeated police suppression, did they become violent," said Mr Bequelin.
The ongoing unrest - and China's response to it - heightens the government's prospects of facing worldwide protests as the Olympic torch circles the globe.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner also called for an end to "repression" in Tibet and said he had requested his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, allow journalists into the region.