China ready to tackle unrest in Tibetan regions

By Lindsay Beck

BEIJING (Reuters) - China prepared to tackle more unrest in its ethnic Tibetan enclaves on Monday, after crushing Lhasa protests against Chinese rule in which Tibet's exiled representatives say as many as 80 people were killed.

Lhasa, the capital of the remote Himalayan region, was under tight police watch, but reports and officials said demonstrations by ethnic Tibetans flared in at least two Chinese provinces, widening the worries of the Communist authorities.

"We are completely capable of protecting the security of the Tibet people. Right now the overall situation in Tibet is very good," the mayor of Lhasa, Doje Cezhug, said from Beijing, in remarks posted on the Tibet government's Web site.

But protests hit ethnic Tibetan areas in the Chinese provinces of Sichuan and Gansu on Sunday, reducing the chances of an early end to the instability that is a major challenge to China's leaders just months before it hosts the Olympic Games.

In the Sichuan county town of Aba, a police officer said a crowd of Tibetans had hurled petrol bombs and burned down a police station and a market.

In Gansu's Machu town, a crowd of 300-400 carried pictures of Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and shouted slogans as they marched on government buildings, breaking windows and doors and setting fire to Chinese shops and businesses, the Free Tibet Campaign said.

The London-based group said 100 Tibetan students staged a sit-in at Northwest Minority University in Gansu's capital, Lanzhou, a worry for a country with a history of student unrest, notably the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 that ended in a military crackdown.

In Lhasa, the situation was quiet but tense and police locked down the region as a midnight deadline loomed for protesters to give themselves up to the police.