China seeks to silence critics as it gears up for Olympics

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CHENGDU, China - The city's main Tibetan neighbourhood was bustling yesterday with backpackers browsing souvenir shops for paintings and prayer wheels -- and armed police in squad cars, siren lights blinking, slowly cruising by.

Unlike in Tibet, where the flow of visitors is tightly controlled, or in remote areas in surrounding provinces that can be clamped shut with a few roadblocks, Chengdu is one of China's largest cities and the home of a significant international community.

Here, Chinese authorities have had to clamp down on a Tibetan neighbourhood without throwing foreigners out in an effort to prevent fresh anti-government protest while protecting China's image abroad.

Since demonstrations in Lhasa exploded into violence on March 14, sparking pockets of sympathy protests in surrounding regions, China has sought to reverse a public relations disaster ahead of the Aug. 8-24 Olympics in Beijing.

The lighting of the Olympic flame is set for today in Greece. One of Thailand's six torchbearers withdrew yesterday to protest Beijing's response to the Tibetan demonstrations.

Thousands of Chinese troops have swarmed a broad swath of western China in recent days, setting up encampments and patrolling the streets to prevent new riots.

Beijing lashed out at critics of its crackdown and blamed the unrest on the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader.

"The evil motive of the Dalai clique is to stir up troubles at a sensitive time and deliberately make it bigger and even cause bloodshed so as to damage the Beijing Olympics," said the Tibet Daily yesterday. The newspaper, run by Chinese authorities, called it "a life-and-death struggle between ourselves and the enemy."

The Dalai Lama, who said he did not instigate the Lhasa violence, denied the allegation Sunday from the sidelines of a Buddhist prayer session in New Delhi, India.

"I always support (that the) Olympics should take place in China," he said.

In Chengdu, capital of the populous western Chinese province of Sichuan and the main gateway to Tibet, residents of a Tibetan neighbourhood say armed police arrived a week ago soon after protests against 57 years of Chinese rule in Tibet turned violent.

The neighbourhood was quickly silenced.

At the local university for Tibetans and other minorities, signs posted last week warn students of a 9 p.m. curfew.

Even as the police presence in the neighbourhood started to scale back this weekend, many Tibetans who were approached refused to talk. "I don't dare," one man said.