Tibetans in Ireland claim 1,000 killed

IRELAND: TIBETANS LIVING in Ireland have said they were informed yesterday morning that as many as 1,000 of their people may have died in clashes with Chinese forces over recent days.

Naymgya Damdul, president of the Tibetan Community in Ireland group, told The Irish Times he was "extremely worried" by recent events in his country.

He said his community had e-mailed the Taoiseach and Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern before the violence escalated, asking them to use their influence with China to restrain its use of force in Tibet and "to ensure protection there for the basic human rights of freedom of expression and of assembly".

He called on the Irish people to e-mail the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Chinese embassy in Dublin and the UN Human Rights Council to encourage the UN body "to immediately send a fact-finding delegation to all affected areas in Tibet and urge China to immediately address the root causes of this problem through dialogue with His Holiness the Dalai Lama".

Members of the Tibetan community in Ireland, which number some 25, staged a day-long protest against China's actions outside the GPO in Dublin last Sunday. A spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said yesterday that representations were to be made to the Chinese embassy on behalf of the Irish people expressing concern about the situation in Tibet, and urging China to exercise restraint.

Minister for European Affairs Dick Roche, who attended St Patrick's Day events in Beijing at the weekend, said he had not raised the issue of Tibet with officials there. Interviewed on RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland programme, he said he met the relevant Chinese minister in Beijing before news of events in Tibet had broken there. The appropriate way to deal with the situation was through channels in Dublin, he said. This had been done and was as other EU states were doing, he said.

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times