Protesters surrender to avoid harsh punishments

Reports have claimed today that more than 100 people have turned themselves in to police in Tibet’s capital Lhasa to take advantage of a leniency offer after violent anti-government riots.

Xinhua News Agency says 105 people had surrendered as of late last night.

The communist government on Sunday had promised leniency for those who handed themselves in, and harsh punishment for those who did not.

It was impossible to confirm the figure.

Foreign media are banned from going to Lhasa, where rioters rampaged last Friday in violence the government has said killed 16. It has denied claims by overseas Tibetan groups that 80 were killed.

The Lhasa protests, led by monks, began peacefully on March 10, the anniversary of a failed uprising in 1959 against Chinese rule, and then spiralled out of control.

Tibet had been effectively independent for decades before Chinese Communist troops entered in 1950.

Xinhua quoted a government official as saying the people who gave themselves up had been “directly involved in the beating, smashing, looting and arson last Friday”.

“Some have turned in the money they looted,” Baema Chilain, vice chairman of the regional government, was quoted as saying.