Tibet News (3.21.09)

by Danny Fisher

Image capture from newly surfaced video footage of last year’s riots and demonstrations in Lhasa. Via Students for a Free Tibet.
[This post has been updated as of 12:20 p.m. EST on 3.21.09.]

Here are today’s headlines about Tibet:

  • The Telegraph tells us about newly found footage from last year’s riots and demonstrations in Lhasa:

      Video footage from Tibet is extremely rare. The [new] film, which shows violent scenes from the March 2008 riots, is the clearest evidence yet that Tibetans were subject to police brutality as China struggled for control in Lhasa.

      In the seven-minute film…Chinese police kick and beat apparently defenceless Tibetan protesters and monks after they have been handcuffed and are lying on the ground.

      [...]

      The second half of the video, which is too graphic to show here, documents a serious set of injuries allegedly sustained by a Tibetan worker after he intervened in the beating of a monk.

  • Students for a Free Tibet offers an official statement on the footage.
  • In his blog Pomfret’s China for the Washington Post/Newsweek venture PostGlobal, John Pomfret ponders “Hillary, Human Rights and Tibet.” It’s a new enough post that the author includes thoughts on the footage above in his discussion.
  • The Associated Press is reporting that the Chinese government is “treating the shooting death of an on-duty soldier as a terrorist attack.”
  • Reuters also reports that “Chinese security forces recently destroyed a case filled with explosives found in Tibet’s regional capital of Lhasa, and broke up a group behind an attempted attack.”
  • Both The Progressive and Asia Sentinel consider Tibet’s future. (Thanks to our friend, stringer, and past interviewee Erick D. White for the tip on the Asia Sentinel piece.)