BEIJING — Chinese security forces fired indiscriminately on Tibetan protesters in 2008 and beat and kicked others until they lay motionless on the ground, a rights group said in a report, citing witnesses to clashes in which the government claims it acted with restraint.
The Human Rights Watch report released today gives a detailed examination — based on rare eyewitness accounts — of China’s crackdown on the broadest anti-government uprising the country has faced from Tibetans in nearly 50 years.
Riots started in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and then spread to communities across China’s west.
Since the unrest, Beijing has sought to suppress accounts of rights abuses. It has flooded the region with troops, put Tibetans under tighter scrutiny, reduced the flow of international tourists and allowed in only a few foreign reporters under government escort.
Among the report’s findings: Witnesses say that on March 14, 2008, security forces fired on Lhasa protesters near the Barkhor, the heart of the old city. They say that at several rallies, security forces also hit demonstrators with batons and rifle butts until they were no longer moving. As protests spread across the Tibetan plateau, security forces shot at secondary school students headed to a demonstration and at monks and civilians marching toward government buildings.
The 73-page report says security forces also tortured protesters and others during arrests and in detention by beating them and depriving them of food and sanitary conditions. It points out that hundreds of Tibetans arrested in the crackdown remain unaccounted for.
The Chinese government had no immediate comment. In the past, the government has blamed the riots on Tibetan separatists organized and instigated by supporters of the exiled Dalai Lama.
