蘋果日報
無懼逮捕嚇阻 印度藏人長征同胞聲援
旅居印度及尼泊爾的藏人持續以抗議表達對故鄉及同胞的支持。印度藏人不畏當地警方逮捕逾百人的嚇阻，昨天在德拉敦發動新的「返鄉長征」行動，誓言要走回西藏；尼泊爾首都加德滿都前晚的聲援西藏示威集會，警方與約千人爆發肢體衝突，有12名喇嘛受傷。
尼泊爾千人遊行
數十名印度藏人昨在德拉敦附近展開新的「返鄉長征」，遊行主辦人奇密勇中（譯音）說：「我們會持續長征，直到抵達西藏為止。即使長征者被逮捕，還會有更多人加入。」他也針對拉薩藏人流血抗議事件說：「對於在西藏付出生命的藏人，我們心懷感激。」逾百名流亡藏人日前從印度達蘭薩拉市啟程，預計半年穿越喜瑪拉雅山脈回西藏，但周四在德拉敦遭逮捕。
近1000名藏人昨在達蘭薩拉市集會，焚燒中國國旗，高喊「自由西藏」及「停止西藏殺戮」等口號；約15名抗議者前晚企圖衝進新德里中國大使館，遭警方拘捕。
尼泊爾加德滿都一間寺廟前晚舉行支持拉薩抗議事件燭光集會，群情激憤演變成憤怒遊行，遊行隊伍企圖前進中國大使館，尼國警方出面阻止，雙方扭打，約12名喇嘛受到輕傷。編譯張翠蘭
尼泊爾 警民衝突
西藏喇嘛前晚在尼泊爾首都加德滿都示威，與警方爆發肢體衝突。
DHARAMSALA, India — As Tibet erupted in protests against Chinese rule, this small, normally placid town in the foothills of the Himalayas became a nerve center and soapbox for Tibetan exiles and a vital channel through which news from Tibet seeped out into the world.
Tibetans at home telephoned Tibetans here with snippets of what they saw and heard of the Chinese crackdown last week. Photographs of gory killings, which Buddhist monks said they had received by e-mail from across the border, were displayed in monasteries. Human rights workers played a tape-recorded conversation with a caller who said he had witnessed a massacre.
Dharamsala, long the seat of the Tibetan government in exile and a popular destination for spiritual tourism, has been elevated into the high-energy hub of the Tibetan uprising.
Throughout the day on Monday, hundreds of protesters gathered near the gates of the temple of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, chanting, “We want freedom!”
Their faces painted the blue, red and yellow of the Tibetan flag, they shouted praise for the Dalai Lama and furiously condemned President Hu Jintao of China. “Out, out, out,” they roared, demanding full secession for Tibet, a sharp departure from the Dalai Lama’s calls for autonomy but not independence.
By mid-morning, a group of high school students in forest-green school sweaters had gathered near the temple gates holding a flag of Tibet. One of them, Tsering Dolma, 17, said they had cut class, flouting the principal’s orders and riding a bus 90 minutes through the hills to join the protests here.
“It was the pain in our hearts,” she said in halting English. “We needed to escape.”
Many of the students, including Ms. Dolma, had made an earlier escape, crossing the mountains on foot from Tibet and leaving their parents behind.
One student, Choedak, 18, said he had spoken to his mother, in Lhasa, on Saturday night. “All the streets are smoke and tears,” she told him. “We cannot open our eyes. Every street is like empty.”
Posters for hatha yoga and Tibetan massage (as seen in Lonely Planet tour guides, they boasted) competed for wall space with angry calls for freedom. “The Game’s Over. Free Tibet,” read one ubiquitous sticker, alluding to China’s role as host of the Olympic Games. A banner said, “Stop the Killings in Tibet.”
Down the hill, at the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, calls poured in with accounts of events across the border. Urgen Tenzin, the center’s executive director, recorded a call he received Sunday. The caller described seeing seven people shot dead at a demonstration in front of a Tibetan monastery in Sichuan Province. Callers from Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, reported police officers making house-to-house searches on Sunday evening, and a number of arrests.
Mr. Tenzin’s cellphone trilled and he grabbed his notebook. The call was a secondhand report of a protest breaking out Monday at a medical college in a province outside the Tibet Autonomous Region.
“We are quite helpless,” Mr. Tenzin said. “What we can do except disseminate information?”
In the late afternoon, monks at the Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies monastery disseminated a half-dozen chilling photographs that they said were from Aba in Sichuan Province, a city Tibetans call Ngaba. One photograph showed a tank in the middle of a street, and another showed bodies in the road and a child crouching to get a closer look. The monks said a source in Aba sent the image Monday afternoon by e-mail, somehow circumventing the Chinese government’s latest Internet restrictions.
What followed was a most unusual news conference. The monks telephoned a man who said he was in Aba and let reporters listen as he described soldiers filling the streets of the city and people vowing to resist Beijing’s midnight deadline to end their demonstrations.
The monks would not identify the caller, except to show reporters that they had indeed dialed a number inside China.
By evening, the photographs were plastered across town.
Not all the reports painted a portrait of peaceful protests. On Saturday, Kunchok Jigmey, the secretary of this monastery, received a call from an affiliated monastery, Kirti, in Zoige County, Sichuan, describing how 400 people, including monks, who poured into the streets, shouted, “Long live his holiness, the Dalai Lama,” burned Chinese flags and broke the windows of Chinese-owned shops and restaurants.
Like the other reports, this one could not be independently verified.
Many of the protesters, including young people and members of radical exile groups, openly broke with the Dalai Lama’s advocacy of a “middle way” of freedom but not independence from China. They raised a chorus of stridently anti-Chinese slogans and, before the Dalai Lama spoke to reporters on Sunday, laid Chinese flags on the road, inviting cars and pedestrians to trample on them.
The Dalai Lama, 72, has held talks with Beijing since 2002 and continues to endorse the Olympic Games this summer in China. On Sunday, he said he would not tell his followers to surrender by midnight on Monday, even though he feared that continued protests would prompt further crackdowns by Chinese authorities.
“We, the young people, feel independence is our birthright,” said Dolma Choephel, 34, a social worker active with the Tibetan Youth Congress. “We understand the limitations of the Dalai Lama’s approach.”
The president of the group, Tsewang Rigzin, went further. “There is growing frustration among the younger generation,” he said. “I certainly hope the middle way approach would be reviewed.”
Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama’s government in exile called for an independent international inquiry into the crackdown and urgent assistance for Tibet. It said that at least 80 people had been killed, and that some 400 had been wounded in Lhasa alone. On Monday night, as the deadline approached, hundreds of Tibetans, young and old, gathered in the courtyard of the Dalai Lama’s temple to recite prayers for the dead.
Tenzin Gelek, 25, sat with a candle in hand and said bloodshed was inevitable back home. “I’m sure they will kill many more after midnight tonight,” he said bitterly of the Chinese forces. “We are helpless here.”
Hari Kumar contributed reporting.
More Photos
AFP NewsNepal police arrest 44 in Tibet protests
Mar 17, 2008
KATHMANDU (AFP) — At least 44 Tibetan exiles shouting "Free Tibet" were detained in the Nepal capital on Monday after police broke up two protests outside a UN complex, using sticks and tear gas.
Some 30 of them were taken into custody after 100 people held a morning protest outside the UN compound while, 14 were held when 250 staged a demonstration later in the day.
The Tibetans said they wanted to pressure the United Nations to investigate a crackdown by Beijing on the fiercest uprising against Chinese rule of the Himalayan region in nearly two decades.
Nepalese policemen arrest a protesting Tibetan exile.
The 44 detained Tibetans would be freed later on Monday, a police officer said, asking to remain unnamed.
The demonstrators included Tibetan monks and nuns who were hit during police baton charges, according to an AFP photographer, but the police officer said he had no information about any injuries. Tear gas was also fired.
"I don't know why police are attacking our peaceful demonstration. We've gathered here to put pressure on the United Nations to investigate the crackdown on Tibetans in Lhasa," protester Tashi Lama, 29, told AFP.
Exiled Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama called Sunday for an international probe into the situation in his homeland, which he fled in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule.
Some 20,000 Tibetan refugees have lived in Nepal for decades after large numbers started coming over the Himalayas in 1959 following the uprising.
Today, around 2,500 still arrive annually at a UN-run reception centre in Kathmandu and then most proceed to Dharamshala in northern India, home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Tibet's exiled prime minister Samdhong Rinpoche said on Monday around 100 people died in unrest in the Chinese-ruled region, while the Tibetan parliament in exile reported "hundreds" killed.
China has rejected charges many have died in the unrest, saying Tibetan rioters killed 13 "innocent civilians" during violent protests in Lhasa, and that it did not use "lethal" force to quell the rioting.
英首相布朗（圖）昨致電中國國務院總理溫家寶，要求中國處理西藏問題要克制，溫家寶則表示已準備有條件與達賴喇嘛對話。路透
