Dalai Lama attacks 'cultural genocide'

China was last night struggling to contain the most powerful threat to its international reputation since the Tiananmen Square massacre of democracy activists in 1989, as angry protests against its rule in Tibet spilled into neighbouring provinces.

Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, accused China of "cultural genocide" after a violent crackdown on Buddhist monks and Tibetan citizens in the capital Lhasa and other Tibetan centres left at least 100 people dead.

With the Beijing Olympic Games five months away, the Communist government is defending its actions by accusing the Dalai Lama of organised insurgency and insisting its security forces acted with restraint against angry mobs.

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In Lhasa, the streets were said to be largely deserted as residents took stock of a tumultuous week, which began with peaceful protests by Tibetan Buddhist monks and ended with angry rioters facing off against armed police. At the Labrang monastery in neighbouring Gansu province, monks said they had seen four people shot dead after riot police attacked the protesters.

Checking these facts is impossible because, following a brief window when this correspondent and others managed to get into the town at the weekend, authorities have sealed off the town. But the clashes at Labrang, a picturesque town at the edge of the Tibetan plateau, show just how widespread the demonstrations have become.

In a further bid to isolate the unrest, China last night halted all travel permits for foreigners to visit Tibet.

The International Olympic Committee has so far shrugged off calls for a boycott of the Games. The international community is keenly watching to see what happens next. Significantly, the Dalai Lama said that he still supports Beijing's effort to stage the Olympics. "Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some kind of cultural genocide is taking place," the Dalai Lama said, referring to China's policy of encouraging members of the ethnic Han majority to migrate to the region. "It's really desperate," he told the BBC. "Things become tense as the Tibetan side is determined, the Chinese side also equally determined. So that means the result is killing."

The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising nine years after the People's Liberation Army entered Lhasa, is considered by the Chinese government to be a dangerous separatist.

Describing the demonstrators as "vandals", the official Chinese news agency Xinhua ran stories of heroism by police and armed militia in the face of "sabotage... organised, premeditated and masterminded by the Dalai clique".

Xinhua reported that the violence on Friday left 12 police and servicemen of the armed police gravely injured during the Friday riot, two of them critical.

Xiahe is in the mostly Tibetan area of Amdo, part of which is in the Chinese province of Gansu. The Tibetan Autonomous Region only refers to part of Tibet but nearly three million Tibetans live in neighbouring provinces of China, such as Gansu and Sichuan.

For Tibetans, the borders imposed by Beijing are irrelevant and there have been protests all over this region. According to the Free Tibet Campaign, the riots have also spread to Kirti monastery in Aba County, in the province of Sichuan, where witnesses say they saw 13 people shot by security forces.

Protesters use network of dissent

In the lull between violent clashes in Xiahe in Gansu province, monks and pilgrims in Tibetan costume walked the streets using the most dangerous weapons in the world – the cameras on their mobile phones.

You can do a lot of damage with a grainy picture of police brutality from your cheap phone handset.

Many of the young monks who went head-to-head with heavily armed Chinese riot police near the Labrang monastery hadn't been born the last time Tibetans fought against Beijing, in the late 1980s. Back then, the Chinese government quickly restored order and imposed martial law. The new generation has the internet, the planet's most powerful weapon of dissent.

When the current protests began in Lhasa, there was a fear that China would cut mobile phone links. But eyewitness accounts and low-resolution photographs are making their way into the wider world via China's excellent mobile phone network.

The Great Firewall of China is a blunt instrument, but most Net-savvy youngsters know how to get around it.