China deploys huge troops to quell unrest--activists
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 20:55:00 03/19/2008
BEIJING -- China has deployed large numbers of troops in its westernmost provinces to suppress Tibetan unrest, a witness and activist groups said Wednesday.
Troop movements seemed to be particularly big in southwest China's Sichuan province, bordering on the Tibetan Autonomous Region and home to several mainly Tibetan areas, according to one witness.
A foreign reporter travelling in Sichuan reported seeing a large number of military trucks carrying soldiers along rural roads near the border with Tibet.
Several police and paramilitary police officers could also be seen in a city in the same area, the reporter told Agence France-Presse.
The Free Tibet Campaign reported that police in Sichuan's Ngawa county, where a deadly protest took place on Sunday, were making announcements from loudspeaker vans urging the leaders of recent protests to surrender.
"The police announced that those who surrendered would be forgiven for their involvement in the demonstration," the Free Tibet Campaign said, citing a local eyewitness, a monk.
AFP had earlier reported, citing an eyewitness and activist groups, that Chinese security forces in Ngawa had opened fire on the protesters, killing at least eight.
In Machu county, northwest China's Gansu province, which is also home to sizeable communities of ethnic Tibetans, large numbers of troops were also observed, the Free Tibet Campaign said.
It cited a local source as saying 25 trucks carrying troops armed with guns had arrived along with several tanks.
Machu has also been the scene of protests which early this week had drawn several thousand people, according to an earlier report from the Free Tibet Campaign.
In several of the sightings, it was unclear if the troops sighted by eyewitnesses were regular soldiers of the People's Liberation Army, or paramilitary forces of the People's Armed Police.
The protests began last week to mark the anniversary of a failed uprising in 1959 against China's rule of Tibet.
China said rioters killed 13 "innocent civilians" in Tibet's capital Lhasa on Friday. Tibet's prime minister-in-exile said on Monday that about 100 people had been killed in China's crackdown on the protesters.
China is trying to block foreign reporters from accessing the flashpoint areas to prevent independent reporting of the unrest and crackdown.
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