BEIJING — The Chinese government has sentenced 55 people in connection with deadly riots in March protesting Beijing’s rule over Tibet, state media reported late Tuesday.
The official Xinhua News Agency did not say what sentences the 55 received, what charges they were convicted of, whether they had lawyers or what happened to the 147 people still believed to be held by authorities after the riots.
It was also unclear whether the number included 30 people, among them six Buddhist monks, sentenced to terms ranging from three years to life in prison during a one-day trial in April.
Beijing says the protests were part of a violent campaign by Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and his supporters to overthrow Chinese rule in Tibet and sabotage the Beijing Olympics in August.
The Dalai Lama has denied involvement in violence and says he only wants greater autonomy for the remote Himalayan region.
According to Xinhua, police detained 1,317 people in the aftermath of the rioting that left 22 people dead. The government later released 1,115 protesters, sending the rest to trial.
Many Tibetans insist they were an independent nation before Communist troops invaded in 1950, while Beijing says the Himalayan region has been part of its territory for centuries.
Meanwhile, Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the self-proclaimed Tibetan government-in-exile, said two envoys sent by the Dalai Lama to China for talks had returned to India on Wednesday.
Rinpoche did not provide any details of the talks, but after the last meeting one of the envoys said China was not serious about resolving the Tibetan issue and that future talks would be useless unless it had a change of heart.
During a visit to Japan Monday, the Dalai Lama said his efforts to engage China have failed to bring positive changes and that he was unsure whether new talks would produce any breakthroughs.
