Saturday, March 31, 2012

Thousands in northern India attend funeral of Tibetan activist who burned himself alive

DHARMSALA, India — Thousands of emotional Tibetan exiles chanted prayers and shouted slogans in northern India on Friday as they attended the funeral of a man who set himself on fire in protest of China’s rule of his homeland.

Jamphel Yeshi’s coffin was first placed on a specially designed stage outside the Tsuglakhang temple in the hill town of Dharmsala, the exiled community’s headquarters. A Tibetan flag covered the wooden coffin and exiles threw ceremonial silk scarves — a traditional Himalayan offering of respect — on top of it.

The 27-year-old set himself on fire on Monday and succumbed to his wounds on Wednesday. He was protesting ahead of a visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao, who was in New Delhi for a summit with the leaders of India, Russia, Brazil and South Africa.

Yeshi’s funeral began with the Tibetan national anthem, followed by prayers.

“How many Tibetan lives have to be lost before the Tibetan issue is resolved?” Penpa Tsering, the speaker of the Tibetan government-in-exile, said to the crowd.

Later, an ambulance covered in Tibetan scarves and portraits of Yeshi carried his body to a local crematorium, where traditional Tibetan Buddhist rites were performed.

A large, emotional crowd followed the vehicle, chanting prayers and shouting slogans such as “May Martyr Jamphel Yeshi’s name be immortal” and “What do we want? We want freedom!”

source Credit: The Washington Post

Monday, March 26, 2012

Tibetan lights self on fire at anti-China protest


NEW DELHI (AP) — A Tibetan exile lit himself on fire and ran shouting through a demonstration in the Indian capital Monday, just before a visit by China's president and following dozens of self-immolations done in China in protest of its rule over Tibet.
Indian police swept through the New Delhi protest a few hours later, detaining scores of Tibetans.
The man apparently had doused himself with something highly flammable and was engulfed in flames when he ran past the podium where speakers were criticizing China and President Hu Jintao's visit.
Fellow activists beat out the flames with Tibetan flags and poured water onto him. He was on fire perhaps less than two minutes, but some of his clothing had disintegrated and his skin was mottled with black, burned patches by the time he was driven to a hospital.
About 30 such protests have occurred over the past year in ethnic Tibetan areas of China, and a Tibetan self-immolated last year in India, where many exiles reside. Beijing has blamed the Dalai Lama for inciting them and called the protesters' actions a form of terrorism.
Tibetans inside China and exiles say China's crackdown on Tibetan regions is so oppressive, those who choose such a horrific form of protest feel they have no other way to express their beliefs.
Activists said the exile who self-immolated Monday is Jamphel Yeshi, 27, who escaped from Tibet in 2006 and has been living in New Delhi for two years.
He was burned on 98 percent of his body and his condition is critical, according to the Association of Tibetan Journalists.
Protesters initially prevented police from taking him to the hospital, but officers eventually forcibly took him away.
While activists had been whispering Monday morning that something dramatic was expected at the protest, organizers insisted they were not behind the self-immolation.
"We have no idea how this happened, but we appreciate the courage," said Tenzing Norsang, an official with the Tibetan Youth Congress.
Hu is expected to arrive in India on Wednesday for a five-nation economic summit. Norsang called on the summit participants to discuss Tibet.
"If you care about peace you should raise the issue of Tibet," he said. "Hu Jintao is responsible for what is happening there."
At the protest site, a large poster of Hu — with a bloody palm print over his face — said: "Hu Jin Tao is unwelcome" at the summit.
More than 600 demonstrators marched across New Delhi to a plaza near the Indian Parliament. Some carried posters saying "Tibet is burning" or "Tibet is not part of China."
"This is what China faces unless they give freedom to Tibet," said Tenzin Dorjee, a young onlooker.
China says Tibet has always been part of its territory. Tibetans say the Himalayan region was virtually independent for centuries.
Many of the protesters who have self-immolated in China are Buddhist monks or nuns, often in their teens or early 20s. They have done so while calling for the return to Tibet of the Dalai Lama and to protest Chinese rule over their homeland. Security forces have taken many away, and it's unknown how many survived.
The origin of this form of protest is unclear. Some activists see inspiration from the Arab Spring protests, set off by a Tunisian fruit seller's self-immolation. Others see historical examples among Buddhist monks: those who protests Vietnam's crackdowns in the 1960s and Chinese in the last imperial dynasty.
The economic summit Hu will be attending this week involves the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, who form a grouping known as BRICS.
Police in New Delhi were already bracing for protests by the tens of thousands of Tibetan exiles who live in India. Security around the summit location has been tightened, and roads leading to the hotel will be closed to the public a day ahead of the meeting.
Rajan Bhagat, a spokesman for the Delhi police, did not know how long the protesting Tibetans would be held, or how many had been taken into custody.
Tibetan protesters normally are held for anywhere from a few hours to one day — often to stop them from further embarrassing Indian authorities during Chinese visits — though detainees legally can be held for up to one week.
source credit: Associated Press

China struggles to contain wave of defiance in Tibet

It's illegal for Tibetans to protest, and yet demonstrations against Chinese rule have taken place almost daily for the past two months.
Several monks have set themselves alight, illustrating the desperation of Tibetans resisting Chinese rule.
The spate of self-immolations in the Tibetan-dominated areas of China that have occurred over the past year is "extreme" and hurts social harmony, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said recently.
Wen's comments, at a news conference at the end of the annual meeting of parliament, come after around 26 Tibetans have set themselves on fire, mostly in southwestern China, to protest against Chinese rule in Tibet. At least 19 have died, according to Tibetan rights groups.

Activists say China violently stamps out religious freedom and culture in Tibet, which has been under Chinese control since 1950.
China rejects criticism that it is eroding Tibetan culture and faith, saying its rule has ended serfdom and brought development to a backward region.
The brother of a monk who self-immolated spoke from exile, saying he was "shocked" when he heard the news, but understands the monk's sacrifice. "I feel really, really proud of him and I respect his sacrifice a lot," he said.
Source credit: msnbc

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Tibetans call off UN hunger strike protest

UNITED NATIONS — Three Tibetans who have been on hunger strike outside the UN headquarters for the past month ended their protest Thursday after the UN said investigators would look into events in Tibet, a protest organizer said.
One of the three was in hospital when two UN officials handed over a letter to the other two from UN human rights chief Navi Pillay. They struggled out of wheelchairs to sing the Tibetan anthem after the protest was ended.
The letter from Pillay said that the rights chief had "assigned special rapporteurs of the United Nations to look into the situation inside Tibet," protest organizer Tsewang Rigzin told AFP.
"Navi Pillay herself has an open invitation to China and they are working on getting the date fixed," added the official from the Tibetan Youth Congress.
Rigzin said that as the United Nations was trying to assess the situation in Tibet and the two officials had personally handed over the letter to the hunger strikers they had decided to call off the protest.
"This is a small victory," he said.
Dorjee Gyalpo, Yeshi Tenzing and Shingza Rimpoche started refusing food and sat outside the UN headquarters on February 22. They had vowed to fast until a UN fact-finding mission was sent to Tibet and also demanded international pressure on China to end what they call an "undeclared martial law" in Tibet.
New York police would not let them sleep in the street and each day made the three prove they could stand up. Police made Shingza Rimpoche, 69, go to hospital on Monday, but he had continued to refuse food.
UN leader Ban Ki-moon had expressed concern about the health of the three on March 12 through his spokesman.
On Thursday, Richard Bennett, an advisor to an assistant secretary general for human rights and an official from Ban's office, Parfait Onanga, handed over the letter to the Tibetan protesters.
"The letter is addressed to the three hunger strikers, and they have agreed to end their fast," Bennett said afterwards. "We brought them juice to break their fast."
"I think everyone has the right to peaceful protest. But we are also relieved that this particular protest has concluded," Bennett added. He would not reveal the contents of the letter.
China is extremely sensitive to criticism on Tibet, where there have been a growing number of self-immolation protests in recent months. A 20-year-old Tibetan Buddhist monk has died in detention after he set himself on fire in a town in southwest China, a US-based rights group said Wednesday.
Many Tibetans in China complain of religious repression, as well as the gradual erosion of their culture.
China put down a 1959 uprising led by the Dalai Lama, who is currently in exile. It says Tibetans now lead better lives than ever thanks to huge government investment.
Source credit: AFP

Friday, March 16, 2012

Dalai Lama to speak at Loyola University next month

The Dalai Lama is heading to Chicago next month.

The Tibetan spiritual leader will be speaking about interfaith collaboration at Loyola University on April 26.
The speech is a private ticketed event for Loyola students, faculty, staff and alumni, according to the school’s website.
Many Tibetans consider the 76-year-old Dalai Lama to be their rightful leader.
He fled Tibet to India in 1959 during an unsuccessful anti-Beijing uprising and is reviled by China’s Communist government.

Source Credit: Chicago Sun Times



Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Tibetans protest in western China

Several hundred Tibetans have protested against Chinese rule in the western province of Qinghai after a monk there set himself alight, rights groups say.

The Tibetan monk set fire to himself outside a monastery in the town of Tongren, Free Tibet and the International Campaign for Tibet said.

He suffered burns but is thought to have survived.

In the past year more than 25 Tibetans have self-immolated in protest at what they say is religious repression.

Some were reported to have called for the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet.

Self-immolations are rarely reported from Qinghai, although several people have set themselves alight there in the past year. Most such incidents have taken place in the neighbouring province of Sichuan.

In Wednesday's protest, a monk in his 30s named as Jamyang Palden, set fire to himself in the square outside the Rongwo monastery in Tongren, Harriet Beaumont of Free Tibet told the BBC.

"We don't know the extent of his injuries but photos clearly show he suffered extensive burns."

She said he had been admitted to hospital but monks later took him back to the monastery "for his own safety".

"We understand that a large number of military trucks have seen arriving in the town," she said.

Free Tibet says about 500 monks gathered to show their solidarity for the monk and they were joined by people from the surrounding area.

The campaign group says there were also protests by hundreds of Tibetan students in three schools in the area, some calling for freedom to study in Tibetan.

On Wednesday China's Premier Wen Jiabao said he was distressed by the self-immolations, describing them as "radical moves which undermine social harmony".

He said Tibetan areas would remain inseparable parts of China's territory.

China has tightened security in Tibetan areas in recent weeks - 14 March is the anniversary of deadly rioting in Lhasa four years ago.

Verifying these accounts is difficult, as foreign media are not allowed into the area.

Source credit: BBC News

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Group: Tibetan teen monk in China self-immolates on anniversary of failed uprising


BEIJING — A teenage Tibetan monk set himself on fire in protest on the 53rd anniversary of the failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, an overseas activist group said Tuesday.
The London-based Free Tibet group said 18-year-old Gepey self-immolated on Saturday in Aba, a town that is under heavy security lockdown in western Sichuan province.
The group says Gepey was a monk from the town’s Kirti Monastery, the scene of numerous protests against the Chinese government over the past several years. March 10 marked the start of the unsuccessful revolt that eventually caused the Dalai Lama to flee the Himalayan region in 1959.
More than two dozen Tibetans, including several teenagers, have set themselves on fire in China over the last year, protesting China’s suppression of their religion and culture and calling for the return of the Dalai Lama.
Gepey died after self-immolating behind a military camp, Free Tibet said. The group said locals tried to take his body away but security personnel removed it.
A woman from the county Communist Party propaganda department said she had no information about the incident. Calls to the prefectural Communist Party department and police and county police rang unanswered. A man who answered the phone at the Kirti Monastery hung up when he was asked about the self-immolation.
Chinese authorities in Aba refused to allow locals to carry out traditional funeral rites for Gepey so as not to provide an opportunity for Tibetans to gather and protest, Free Tibet said.
Gepey was the third Tibetan this month to self-immolate near a building associated with Chinese authority. Earlier in March, another 18-year-old Tibetan man in the same county set himself on fire and walked to a government office building while a mother similarly protested outside a police station in Aba town.
“We are now witnessing a pattern of Tibetans setting themselves on fire in front of buildings which symbolize China’s current crackdown in Tibet,” Free Tibet’s director Stephanie Brigden said in a statement. “Saturday’s self-immolation is the latest in an ever-increasing list of courageous and profound acts which the world cannot continue to ignore.”
Tibetans, including a prominent writer in Beijing, have pleaded for an end to the self-immolations, saying they are not helping the cause of Tibetan rights.
The communist government has blamed supporters of the exiled Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama for encouraging the self-immolations.
The Dalai Lama has said he does not encourage the protests, but he has praised the courage of those who engage in self-immolation and has attributed the protests to what he calls China’s “cultural genocide” in Tibet.
Source Credit: Associated Press

Monday, March 12, 2012

Carr's challenge on Tibet


Here's a question: What do incoming Foreign Minister Bob Carr and Communist Party delegates sitting down at China's National People's Congress have in common?
The answer is that they all agree the Dalai Lama is "cunning" and "mischievous" - what's more, they agree that the Australian Prime Minister should feel an obligation "not to meet him".
Bob Carr also believes it's an "outrageous suggestion" to claim that Tibetan areas beyond the official Tibetan Autonomous Region could be part of Tibet, especially an independent Tibet. These are the same areas where a steady stream of people have been self-immolating in protest at Chinese rule - there were three last week.
Mr Carr wrote about this in his blog last year and the Chinese Communist Party would be positively thrilled to know that this man has become Australia's Foreign Minister.
When you go along to China's annual session of parliament, the National People's Congress, and ask delegates about problems in Tibet the answers are like a mantra.
The "Dalai Lama Clique" is to blame; the Dalai Lama is a "wolf in sheep's clothing", this is an internal matter for China etc.
So when you read a document as a kind of open letter to Prime Minister Julia Gillard at the time of a visit by the Dalai Lama entitled "Don't meet this cunning monk" you might think it was penned by the same local Communist Party officials who in 2008 promised to use the Olympic Torch to "smash the Dalai Lama Clique"… but no it was written by none other than our incoming Foreign Minister, Bob Carr.
In this article, penned last year, Mr Carr citizen argued that the Prime Minister should feel obliged to not to meet the Dalai Lama because he is a "cunning" person who has a "mischievous agenda in pursuit of theocratic power".
At this point, officials at the Chinese Embassy in Canberra - if they weren't already aware of the article - will be breaking out their best bottle of baijiu and inviting Bob Carr around for a celebratory banquet. In Bob Carr's blog article he goes well beyond the 'Tibet is a part of China and there's nothing anyone can do about it' type argument. He defends the entire legitimacy of the current state of affairs saying that:
"Tibet has been part of China since the Manchu Dynasty."
On this point, many historians would ask him why the People's Liberation Army felt the need to march in there and take Tibet by force in 1951?
The truth is that Tibet had long and complex relationship with China's emperors well before the Manchu Dynasty - often as a vassal state - but the new Foreign Minister sees things in Tibet as very straightforward.
For example, he says it as an "outrageous claim" to define Tibet as including the ethnic Tibetan areas that spill over the border of the official Tibetan Autonomous Region into Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and other provinces. He sees this as a kind of whacky attempt to "antagonise the Chinese".
These are the areas where Tibetans have been self-immolating at an alarming rate: two dozen over the last six months, according to exile groups. Just last week there were three cases: an 18-year old man, a mother of four and a teenage girl.
Mr Carr likens Tibetan independence with allowing Western Australia to secede from Australia. Yet Eastern States military police are not dragging away West Australians to be tortured for advocating independence; nor are the residents of Perth thrown in gaol for their religious beliefs; nor is Western Australia a completely locked down police state, separated from the outside world, requiring special permission to enter and out of bounds to reporters from overseas.
The new Foreign Minister says these are his ideas as Bob Carr personal citizen and now he will toe the government line but surely, as Foreign Minister, he will be helping to form the Government line.
The former Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, for all his faults, at least had the gumption to stand up at Peking University and, in a speech to the country's young elite say that "in Tibet there are indeed human rights abuses". For this he's been criticised by Australian diplomats and some China watchers for "lecturing to the Chinese".
So does Bob Carr's appointment mean we are now in for a period of apologist approaches to Tibet - not unlike that of the Labor government in the 1980s towards Indonesia regarding East Timor and West Papua?
People who live under what they consider to be oppressive regimes don't expect the Australian Government to call for their independence but then again they don't expect us to actively barrack for the team with its boots on their head.
As a journalist, I am not advocating one approach or another to Tibet. I'll leave that to the activists, to the experts and to governments but it is quite instructive to see the mindset of the man who will be taking over the foreign affairs reigns in terms of his world view.
The most important aspect of his argument is that it is not in Australia's interests for the Prime Minister to meet the Dalai Lama. It's not worth upsetting our No. 1 trading partner for the sake of Julia Gillard meeting somebody who Bob Carr sees as sinister and in pursuit of a completely unjustified cause.
Apart from the last bit of this argument with which some would disagree, whatever happened to Australia taking actions because they are simply the right thing to do?
Then there is the long-term view of Australia's interests. Is it more important to not disrupt a steady flow of iron-ore sales to China or to defend the innate right of every human being to live in a free society without daily oppression?
This may sound trite but it is a serious question for Australia to come to terms with as our relationship with China becomes more and more important.
If I am permitted to briefly share my opinion, I don't think that it hurts Australia-China trade one little bit to defend human rights. At the height of the Canberra Beijing Stern Hu Meltdown the two countries signed a major gas deal. The Germans and Americans don't feel the need to compromise and the trade keeps flowing. China has big shoulders and will do business no matter what.
It also goes without saying that I don't think we should lose track of the massive achievements of the Chinese Government in recent decades.
Over to you Foreign Minister - Good luck dealing with this large and complex place.
Source Credit: The Drum( Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Chinese police shoot three in Tibet amid protests

Police in western China fatally shot a Tibetan man and wounded two others amid protests against Chinese rule, an activist group and a U.S. broadcaster said Saturday.
Senior exiled Tibetan monk urges end to immolations in China
Chinese police fire into crowd of Tibetan protesters, say witnesses
The Monitor's View: Self-immolation as protest tactic rises in Tibet, Middle East
The three men were shot Tuesday by police who were looking for or had detained another man in connection with a Jan. 25 incident in which protesters tore down a Chinese flag at a police station in a Tibetan area of Qinghai province, according to London-based Free Tibet and Radio Free Asia. Both cited unidentified sources in the area.

Employees who answered the phone at local government and police offices in Pema county and the prefecture where it is located, Golog, said they had not heard of the shootings.

More than two dozen Tibetans have set themselves on fire over the past year to protest what activists say is Beijing's suppression of Tibetan religion and culture. The communist government has blamed supporters of the exiled Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama for encouraging the self-immolations.

The latest protests come at a sensitive time for Tibet and China.

China's national legislature is meeting this week amid heightened security throughout the country. March also is when Tibetans mark significant anniversaries, including that of the unsuccessful 1959 revolt during which the Dalai Lama left for exile in India, and deadly anti-government riots that rocked the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, in 2008.

The head of the Tibetan government-in-exile, Lobsang Sangay, issued a statement Saturday calling on new Chinese leaders due to take power this year to give the region "genuine autonomy" within the framework of the nation's constitution.

"When Tibetans gather peacefully and demand basic rights as outlined in the Chinese constitution, they are arrested, fired upon and killed," the statement said. "We hope that China's upcoming leaders will initiate genuine change, and that they find the wisdom to admit the government's longstanding hardline policy in Tibet has failed."

Free Tibet said the man who was killed this week, identified as Choeri, and the two who were wounded were shot after they went to a police station to object to the arrest of another man. It said that man, Thubwang, was believed to be a leader of the protest.

Radio Free Asia said the three men were shot while trying to protect Thubwang during a police manhunt.

The two wounded men are brothers, identified as Karkho and Jampel Lodroe, Free Tibet said. One was wounded in the arm and the other in the leg, and both were treated at a local hospital, it said.

Tibetans, including a prominent writer in Beijing, have pleaded for an end to the self-immolations, saying they are not helping the cause of Tibetan rights.

On Thursday, poet Tsering Woeser said in an online appeal that she is "grief-stricken" about people who have set themselves on fire. The appeal called on influential Tibetans, including monks and intellectuals, to help end the deadly form of protest.

On Friday, Chinese President Hu Jintao met in Beijing with Tibetan delegates to the legislature and urged them to maintain stability, spread the message of ethnic unity and safeguard the unity of the motherland, the official Xinhua News Agency said. He did not mention the self-immolation protests.

The Dalai Lama has praised the courage of those who engage in self-immolation and has attributed the protests to what he calls China's "cultural genocide" in Tibet. He also says he does not encourage the protests.

Source Credit: The Christian Science Monitor

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Chinese officials blame Dalai Lama for string of self-immolation in Tibet

BEIJING — Chinese officials lashed out against exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Wednesday, accusing him and his allies of orchestrating a string of self-immolations in ethnic Tibetan areas of China that have gained international attention and renewed criticisms of the nation's authoritarian governance.

"The Dalai Lama clique and overseas separatist forces are leading Tibetan Buddhism onto the track of extremism," said Wu Zegang, an ethnic Tibetan and the government head for Aba Prefecture in the southwestern province of Sichuan, where most of the fiery protests have taken place.

Speaking at a panel of local officials during the annual meeting of China’s National People’s Congress, a mostly rubber stamp body, Wu and others described the self-immolations as a coordinated plot. In the past year, Tibetan rights groups estimate that at least 25 people have set themselves on fire, an unprecedented act in modern Tibetan history. Of those 25, mostly current and former clergy, 18 have died, according to rights groups.

There have reportedly been three self-immolations since last Saturday alone, including one by a mother in her early-30s said to have shouted “Return his holiness” – the Dalai Lama – “to Tibet” and “We need freedom.”

“Photos revealing the daily lives of most of the self-immolaters had been sent in advance to separatist forces abroad,” Wu said at an event open to the press, according to a translation by the state Xinhua news service. “These photos, contrasted by pictures depicting the self-immolation sites, were immediately dispersed by separatist forces to play up the situation.”

Wu also charged that, “To encourage self-immolations, they even offer a price of compensation for the dead. All these prove that self-immolations are pre-mediated political moves.”

Chinese authorities go to great lengths to prevent foreign journalists from entering ethnic Tibetan areas in Sichuan to check such claims, often detaining reporters at roadblocks and questioning them before escorting their vehicles out of the area. The province abuts Tibet, which the Chinese government officially administers as an autonomous region but is controlled by a strict security regime.

The remarks by Chinese officials on Wednesday conflicted with interviews conducted by McClatchy and others who’ve slipped into villages near the town of Aba, the epicenter of tensions in the prefecture of the same name, and across Sichuan Province. Local ethnic Tibetans have said the self-immolations are a reaction to a repressive Chinese government that curbs their culture, language and religion. That combined with a sense of desperation over the seeming impossibility of the Dalai Lama ever returning to the country, which he fled in 1959, has led to a deep sense of hopelessness, they say.

Nonetheless, the Communist Party secretary of Sichuan, Liu Qibao, said at the panel meeting that, “public complaints about cultural repression do not exist. On the contrary, Tibetan culture is flourishing.”

At the beginning of the month, a senior Chinese official made plain that the government will brook no dissent on the issue.

Jia Qinglin, a member of the nation’s ruling politburo standing committee, said that authorities should, “resolutely crush the Dalai Lama clique's conspiracy of making Tibetan-inhabited areas unstable, thus making the masses able to live and work there comfortably.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/07/2680344/chinese-officials-blame-dalai.html#storylink=cpy

Source Credit: miamiherald.com

Thursday, March 1, 2012

China's top Tibet official orders tighter control of Internet


(Reuters) - China's top official in Tibet has urged authorities to tighten their grip on the Internet and mobile phones, state media reported on Thursday, reflecting the government's fears about unrest ahead of its annual parliamentary session.
The move is the latest in a series of measures the government says are intended to maintain stability, and comes after a spate of self-immolations and protests against Chinese control in the country's Tibetan-populated areas.
It is likely to mean phone and online communications will be even more closely monitored and censored than is normal.
Chen Quanguo, who was appointed the Chinese Communist Party chief of Tibet last August, urged authorities at all levels to "further increase their alertness to stability maintenance" ahead of the National People's Congress, the official Tibet Daily newspaper quoted him as saying on Wednesday.
China's rubber-stamp parliament session meets next Monday.
"Mobile phones, Internet and other measures for the management of new media need to be fully implemented to maintain the public's interests and national security," Chen said.
China has tightened security in what it calls the Tibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan parts of the country following several incidents in which people have set fire to themselves, and protests against Chinese rule, mostly in Sichuan and Gansu provinces.
March is a particularly sensitive time for Tibet, as it marks five years since deadly riots erupted across the region.
Twenty-two Tibetans have set themselves alight in protest since March 2011, and at least 15 are believed to have died from their injuries, according to rights groups. Most of them were Buddhist monks.
Chen also vowed to "completely crush hostile forces" that he said were led by the Dalai Lama, suggesting that he will not ease the government's hard-line stance towards the region, enforced by his predecessor Zhang Qingli.
The Chinese government has repeatedly blamed exiled Tibetans for stoking the protests, including spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising. China has ruled Tibet since 1950.
"The Dalai clique is unceasingly trying to create disturbances in Tibet and Tibetan parts of Sichuan," Jia Qinglin, the Communist Party's fourth-ranked leader, told a meeting in Beijing, state television reported.
Officials must "resolutely smash the Dalai Lama's plots to sow chaos in Tibet and maintain social harmony and stability," added Jia, who heads a largely ceremonial body that advises parliament.
PARLIAMENT JITTERS
Nationally, defending one-party control is a leadership priority. Official anxieties about unrest have multiplied ahead of a change of leadership later this year, when President Hu Jintao will hand power to his successor, widely expected to be Xi Jinping.
Beijing often uses the meeting of parliament as an excuse to clamp down on dissent in an effort to project the appearance of political unity.
A prominent Beijing-based Tibetan writer who goes by the single name of Woeser said on Thursday that state security agents have barred her from collecting an award given by the Netherlands.
Woeser was awarded the Prince Claus award last September for her work on Tibet, according to the website for the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development. She was due to accept the award on Thursday at the Dutch ambassador's house in Beijing, she said.
"They told my husband that I couldn't go to the ceremony but didn't give specific reasons," Woeser told Reuters by telephone. "They said even if I wanted to go, I wouldn't be able to go. They have people below our apartment watching us."
Dutch officials were not immediately available for comment.
Source Credit: Reuters