Chinese police flooded into the streets of the Tibetan capital of Lhasa on Saturday to smother riots that have destroyed scores of Chinese-owned businesses and left at least 10 people dead. Officials demanded that the rioters surrender by midnight Monday, and shopkeepers cowered in their stores as tourists fled the city.Lhasa, a renowned tourist destination high on a Himalayan plateau, was generally quiet a day after the protests against Chinese rule became violent, according to official reports and tourists and residents contacted by telephone. Armed patrols tightly controlled traffic in the middle of town and sealed off the Buddhist monasteries that have traditionally been centers of anti-Chinese sentiment, they said.
"They have closed Lhasa down," said David McGhie, 49, a British tourist who arrived in the city by train at the height of the rioting Friday afternoon and planned to leave as soon as possible. "Clearly, we're not going to see Lhasa."
Patrick Conaghan, a tourist from St. Louis, said he had just stepped off a bus Friday afternoon when "all at once, black smoke. Police were blocking off streets and people running. It was just chaotic."The protesters "were shaking hands with us and telling us to get the message out," Conaghan said in an interview as he arrived Saturday in Beijing on a flight from Lhasa. "You know, if I was Chinese, I would have felt like I was in a race riot in America. I would have been in . . . trouble."
With travel and reporting tightly restricted by Chinese authorities, it was impossible to verify reports of sporadic violence Saturday that were ricocheting around the Internet and through phone calls, particularly among thousands of Tibetans who are in exile to escape Chinese rule.
A group of Tibetan exiles led by the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, said it had confirmed that at least 30 Tibetans had been killed by Chinese forces. The Chinese government put the death toll at 10.
Local authorities pledged a harsh crackdown, risking China's attempt to shine as host of the Olympic Games in August. After days of silence about the escalating protests, the state-controlled media launched extensive coverage. Chinese television broadcast video of the riots and identified protesters as violent saboteurs. Local officials offered rewards for informers and warned residents that anyone caught sheltering a protester would be punished.
The violence not only muddied China's "one world, one dream" Olympic image but also overshadowed what China had hoped would be the big news of the day -- President Hu Jintao's official reelection and the ascension of his likely successor, Xi Jinping, who was named vice president by the Communist Party-controlled legislature. Xi's first job is overseeing management of the Games.
Although the rioting in Lhasa subsided, a struggle ensued over public perceptions of what caused the protests that began Monday and their significance for China's role as Olympic host.
A regional government official defended police actions Friday. He said officers had not fired their weapons but rather had rescued more than 580 people, including three Japanese tourists, from burning buildings. He said many of the 10 dead were business owners who burned to death when their shops were set ablaze. He also said Lhasa was not under martial law.
Chinese leaders urged Lhasa residents to "support the government's crackdown on all forms of criminal activity." A spokesman for the Games organizing committee said the violence would not deter plans for the Olympic torch to be carried over the crest of Mount Everest and into Tibet.
Activists and Tibetan exiles were scrambling to confirm accounts of dead and wounded monks and supporters and were seeking information on dozens, perhaps hundreds, of protesters who had been arrested.
Exiles in India said 49 Tibetans who tried to organize a march in Xigaze, Tibet's second-largest city, were arrested Saturday morning. A group of 44 exiles in India set off on a march to Tibet, after 102 marchers were detained by Indian authorities Friday.
Pro-Tibetan demonstrators protested at Chinese embassies in several countries Saturday. There were more protests near Labrang monastery in China's Gansu province, with reports saying police used tear gas to break up the crowd. In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged China to use restraint and to release monks and others jailed for protesting. And the head of the International Olympic Committee rejected calls from activists to boycott the Games.
Tibetan activists predicted that whatever happens in Lhasa, protests against China's rule over Tibet would continue to pressure China to change its hard-line policies. "For Tibetans outside, it's like the top has blown off the pot," said Lhadon Tethong, a spokesman for Students for a Free Tibet in Dharmsala, India.
The Chinese government depicted the violence as the result of a plot by supporters of the Dalai Lama, who has been in exile in India since 1959 after leading a failed uprising against Chinese rule. According to Tibetans, the protests are a reaction to China's increasingly repressive policies, which they say are undermining Tibetan culture and religion while exploiting its people and land.
"Tibetans are experiencing severe economic marginalization," said Kate Saunders, communications director for the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet. Nomads, who once grazed livestock on grasslands that make up 80 percent of the vast region, are being resettled into farming communities while their land is "literally taken from under their feet."
In the cities, the situation is particularly acute, as Chinese set up business operations and hire other Chinese as employees. Even in the square outside the 1,400-year-old Jokhang Temple, traditional Tibetan scarves are sold by Chinese traders, she said.
Tibet has 2.8 million people, 95 percent of whom are Tibetan and other non-Chinese ethnic groups.
Tensions in Tibet had been rising during the past two years, after Beijing built a railroad line to Lhasa and thousands of Chinese streamed into Tibet.
Meanwhile, local Chinese officials severely restrict traditional Buddhist practices, and their virulent attacks on the Dalai Lama fuel widespread resentment among Buddhists, Saunders said.
"The Dalai Lama has a pretty good image in the West," said a Chinese researcher in Beijing who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic. "The Chinese government has been made to look evil on the Tibet issue, so it is pointless for the government to try to explain anything to the international community."
