Dalai Lama ‘to retire’ from government-in-exile role

NEW DELHI: The Dalai Lama intends to retire as head of the Tibetan government in exile next year as he looks to reduce his ceremonial role and scale back his workload, his spokesman told AFP Tuesday.

The Tibetan movement in exile, based in the northern Indian hill station of Dharamshala since 1960, directly elected a political leader in 2001 for the first time.

“Since then, His Holiness has always said he has been in a semi-retired state,” spokesman Tenzin Taklha said.

“In recent months, His Holiness has been considering approaching the Tibetan parliament in exile to discuss his eventual retirement.”

Taklha stressed that his “retirement” would be from his ceremonial responsibilities as head of the government, such as signing resolutions, not his role as spiritual leader and figurehead for Tibetans.

“This does not mean that he will withdraw

Tibetans protest in China over language policy

BEIJING: At least 1,000 ethnic Tibetan students, demanding protection of their culture, protested in a western Chinese town against curbs on the use of their language, residents and a rights group said on Wednesday.

The students marched through Tongren, also known as Rebkong, on Tuesday, without police interference, residents contacted by telephone and the London-based Free Tibet campaign group said.

Tongren is a heavily Tibetan area of the Chinese province of Qinghai and the region where exiled Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, was born.

Three residents contacted by telephone said that at least 1,000 students had demonstrated, shouting slogans in support of protecting their culture.

“The police did not get involved,” said one resident, who asked not to be identified, citing the sensitive nature of the case.

“They (the protesters)

Landslide in China leaves over 80 dead, 2,000 missing

BEIJING: More than 80 people are dead and over 2,000 are missing after landslides triggered by heavy rain in northwestern China, state media said Sunday.

More than 70 were injured in the landslides in a mainly Tibetan region of Gansu province late Saturday night, state television said.

A total of 20,000 people living in Zhouqu county have been evacuated, the report said.

China declares national day of mourning for quake victims

XINING: China declared a national day of mourning for victims of last week”s earthquake as rescuers battled altitude sickness and bad weather conditions in the Tibetan disaster zone Tuesday.

The government said the nation would be in mourning on Wednesday with flags around the country and at embassies and consulates worldwide flown at half-mast a week after the 6.9-magnitude quake hit a remote corner of Qinghai province.

The death toll from the earthquake in northwestern China stands at 2,064 people, with 175 others missing, according to state media. Another 12,000 people have been injured and tens of thousands left homeless.

A television charity show broadcast nationwide Tuesday evening raised 2.175 billion yuan (320 million dollars) to help quake victims, state media reported.

The government however refused to comment on a request by the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, to be allowed to visit the quake zone in the province where he was born.

The Dalai Lama had appealed to Beijing on Saturday to allow him into China for the first time in 51 years to visit the quake-hit area to “fulfil the wishes of many of the people there”.

However, foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu declined to answer when asked twice at a briefing whether the wish would be granted.

Many Tibetans in the area had expressed hope he would be allowed in, but the request looks unlikely to be granted by China, which tightly controls its restive Tibetan regions and considers the Dalai Lama a “separatist”.

Rescuers continued to sift through rubble in the town of Jiegu, the disaster zone”s main population centre, as snow fell in some parts of the region, slowing traffic and delivery of relief, press reports said.

U.S. warns Syria on weapons transfers

WASHINGTON: The United States summoned the senior Syrian diplomat in Washington to address “provocative behaviour” regarding the potential transfer of Scud missiles to Hezbollah that it said could be a threat to both Lebanon and Israel.

“The United States condemns in the strongest terms the transfer of any arms, and especially ballistic missile systems such as the SCUD, from Syria to Hezbollah,” the statement, issued by State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid, said.

“The transfer of these arms can only have a destabilizing effect on the region, and would pose an immediate threat to both the security of Israel and the sovereignty of Lebanon.”

The U.S. statement stopped short of confirming the alleged transfer of long-range Scud missiles to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, which if true could cast doubt on U.S. President Barack Obama”s diplomatic outreach to Syria.

The State Department said this was the fourth time in recent months that Washington has raised the issue with the Syrian Embassy.

U.S. officials said last week they believed Syria intended to transfer the weaponry, but had doubts about whether the missiles were delivered fully assembled or had actually been transferred to Lebanon.

Damascus has denied the transfer and said Israel might be using the accusation as a pretext for a military strike against Syrian targets.

The U.S. statement was a strong warning to Damascus, saying that weapons transfers were an obstacle to the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians and noting that Syria”s designation as a “state sponsor of terrorism” was tied to its support for groups such as Hezbollah.

“The risk of miscalculation that could result from this type of escalation should make Syria reverse the ill-conceived policy it has pursued in providing arms to Hezbollah,” the statement said.

“We call for an immediate cessation of any arms transfers to Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations in the region.”

A senior U.S. official, while declining to confirm any U.S. intelligence related to the Scuds, said the statement was a sign that the allegations were being taken seriously.

“We wouldn”t have called them in if we didn”t think something was going on,” the official said.

The alleged deal to transfer the Scud missiles to Hezbollah has fuelled cross-border tensions with Israel, which remains wary of the Iranian- and Syrian-backed group that it went to war with in 2006.

Scud missiles in Hezbollah hands could strike deep inside Israel, while a partial transfer could involve weapons parts, documents or funding, according to U.S. officials.

If the transfer is confirmed, it could create fresh obstacles to U.S. Senate confirmation of a new ambassador being returned to Damascus after a five-year absence.

The Obama administration has said that improved U.S. diplomatic ties with Syria are an important part of the Mideast peace process.

Two police killed in Dagestan: official

MOSCOW: Two policemen were killed in Dagestan when unknown assailants opened fire on a road police patrol, the local interior ministry said early Tuesday.

“A road police patrol stopped a car and its passengers opened fire on police, killing one policeman on the spot,” the ministry”s spokesman said.

The other policeman died on the way to hospital, he added.

The Russian authorities are struggling to quash a Muslim insurgency in the country”s volatile North Caucasus region, which includes Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya and has seen a spike in violence in recent days.

China to hold day of mourning for quake victims

BEIJING: China announced a national day of mourning to be held Wednesday for victims of a devastating quake in a remote Tibetan region, as the death toll rose above 2,000.

National flags will fly at half-staff across the country and at its embassies and consulates overseas, marking one week since the magnitude 6.9 temblor hit, China”s Cabinet announced Tuesday. All public entertainment will be suspended as well.

Chinese officials said the death toll in remote Yushu county in western Qinghai province, high on the Tibetan plateau, rose to 2,039, while more than 12,000 people were hurt. Another 200 people remain missing.

Relief efforts could be hindered by rain that was expected Tuesday on the high-altitude region. Sleet, wind, and light snow are forecast for the next three days, said Guo Yinxiang, spokeswoman for the Qinghai Metereological Bureau.

Three people were rescued Monday, including a 4-year-old girl and an elderly woman who survived under the rubble for almost a week in China because relatives used bamboo poles to push water and rice to them until rescuers pulled them out.

The rescue of Wujian Cuomao, 68, and Cairen Baji, 4, from a crumbled home in a village about 13 miles (20 kilometers) from the hardest-hit town of Jiegu was hailed by state media as a miracle and repeatedly played on television news broadcasts.

Relief workers also freed a Tibetan woman named Ritu from the rubble of a hillside house, state broadcaster China Central Television reported. Half her body had been trapped by the debris, the report said, but her vital signs were stable.

In Jiegu, thousands of Tibetan Buddhist monks picked at rubble with shovels, performed funeral rites and threw food to survivors from the backs of trucks.

Relief and reconstruction work accelerated, with power and telecommunications services largely restored and aid convoys arriving in droves.

Convoys of military supply trucks were at a standstill, backed up for miles (kilometers) on the main road heading into town. At a supply depot set up on the town”s edge, huge stacks of bottled water were piled up outside a warehouse. More relief goods rumbled past mountainside hamlets where residents pitched government-provided tents along a two-lane highway that is the only connection between Jiegu and the provincial capital of Xining, the nearest big city.

The Chinese government has poured in aid to the remote Tibetan region, where residents have frequently chafed under Chinese rule. Tibetan anger over political and religious restrictions and perceived economic exploitation by the majority Han Chinese have sometimes erupted in violence.

Hundreds of China quake victims cremated

JIEGU: Buddhist monks on Saturday cremated hundreds of victims of China”s earthquake on a huge funeral pyre near the epicentre of the disaster on a remote corner of the Tibetan plateau.

Bodies were trucked to the site in northwestern Qinghai province, where the Tibetan Buddhist monks lowered the naked, bloodied, and bruised corpses of men, women, and children into a wood-lined, 150-metre-wide (500-foot) trench.

Amid the somber chanting of hundreds of other monks surrounding the pit and lining nearby hills outside the quake zone”s main town of Jiegu, the bodies were doused with gasoline and set ablaze after being blessed by priests.

Huge flames leapt from the massive pile as thick black smoke towered skyward.

“The cremation will allow us to release their spirits so they can go up to heaven,” said a Tibetan woman who gave her name as Fale and who is associated with the Jiegu Buddhist monastery overlooking the town.

The Beijing News quoted local officials as saying a total of 740 corpses were to be cremated Saturday as attention turned to stemming possible disease outbreaks after the deadly disaster.

The death toll from Wednesday”s 6.9-magnitude earthquake in Qinghai province has risen to 1,144, officials said, with more than 400 others missing.

More than 1,000 dead in China quake

JIEGU: The death toll from a strong quake that rocked a remote Tibetan region of China surged past the 1,000 mark on Friday, as tonnes of food, clothes and other vital supplies started pouring in.

Preparations were meanwhile under way for the cremation of hundreds of victims of the disaster as concern turned toward the risk of disease outbreaks in the quake zone, centred on the town of Jiegu in Qinghai province.

A journalist saw hundreds of bodies laid out on the floor of a warehouse-like structure at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery overlooking the town, with locals saying the dead were to be cremated from Saturday.

As of Friday evening the official number of dead had risen to 1,144, the state’s news agency said, up from a toll of 791 earlier in the day. Yet it could rise further with more than 400 still missing.

The wail of sirens and stench of death filled the air as relief vehicles thundered through the hard-hit town in Yushu county.

Thousands of survivors of Wednesday”s 6.9-magnitude earthquake have waited desperately for large-scale shipments of food and other aid, having spent two freezing and hungry nights out in the open after many buildings crumbled.

“I have lost everything,” a distraught ethnic Tibetan woman who gave her name as Sonaman told media.

earthquake china

SHANGHAI – A series of strong earthquakes hit the edge of the Tibetan plateau in western China Wednesday morning, killing at least 67 people. Officials said the death toll would likely climb as rescuers search collapsed buildings.

A magnitude 7.1 temblor struck shortly before 8 a.m. in a remote, mountainous area near the border between China’s Qinghai province and the Tibet Autonomous Region, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

The U.S. Geological Survey said it recorded a 6.9 magnitude quake in southern Qinghai followed by two other temblors in the region.

In Yushu prefecture, an area predominantly inhabited by ethnic Tibetans, witnesses said that many houses had collapsed, according to state media. The prefecture has a population of about 252,000 people, about 97% of whom are Tibetan.

A prefecture official quoted by Xinhua said that in the town of Jiegu near the quake’s epicenter, more than 85% of houses had been knocked down by the quake. Rescuers were digging through the ruble by hand to try to find survivors, Xinhua said.

“Many are buried in the collapsed houses, and there are still lots of others who are injured and being treated at local hospitals,” the local official, Zhuohuaxia told Xinhua. He said local authorities needed excavating equipment and medical supplies.

Guo Yang, a resident of Jiegu interviewed by phone, said: “It is the most devastating thing I’ve ever seen.” Mr. Guo said nearly all the homes in the town had collapsed. “We are busy with rescuing people who are trapped,” he said.

Hundreds of People’s Armed Police were on the scene searching collapsed buildings and thousands more rescuers had been dispatched to the area, state media said.

Earthquakes are a frequent occurrence on the Tibetan plateau, but there are usually few casualties because the area is so sparsely populated. A massive earthquake in May 2008 in Sichuan, in southwestern China, however, left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing.

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