Sichuan: Parents wait outside collapsed high school

Video: Two students in a dormitory room at the University of Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, record their experience during the quake and post it to Tudou.com, a Chinese equivalent of YouTube. It is later reposted on YouTube.

A resident of Dujiangyan who helped to rescue people caught in the collapse of a secondary school building said. “The building is three storeys high, with 18 classrooms. All of the sudden the building collapsed. Many people have died. The People’s Liberation Army are rescuing those trapped under the rubble. Such a terrible tragedy. Many parents are having to wait here for news.”

Tibet, China: Dialogue is crucial, says lama

This is a continuation of an RFA Mandarin service report from Wei Si:

The monks in the lamasery in Daofu county, Sichuan province, also tell us that a group of reporters arrived a few days ago, but were turned away by Chinese security forces who were guarding the gates. Such incidents have become commonplace since the Tibetan anti-Chinese protests which began on March the 14th in Lhasa, they say.

Tibet, China: Monks want Dalai Lama to come home

This report was filed for RFA’s Mandarin service, at considerable risk to the reporter, Wei Si:

It’s a journey of about 400 kilometres along highway from Kangding to Ganzi, in China’s southwestern province of Sichuan. The road is liberally dotted with Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and temples.

Sichuan: Troops ‘will stay until after the Olympics’

From RFA’s Mandarin service.

A woman from Karze (in Chinese, Ganzi) county in the southwestern province of Sichuan, who has spoken to RFA before, indirectly indicated to Mandarin reporter Qiao Long that troops are still stationed in the area:

“Tibetans here won’t be able to stage any protest,” she said. “The death from last week’s protest, occurred in the urban area.”

Tibet: Robbie Barnett on the recent unrest

Comments by Robbie Barnett, Tibet expert at Columbia University, March 27, 2008, regarding the recent major protests in Tibetan-populated rural areas, especially the temporary takeovers of government buildings and taking down of Chinese flags and raising of Tibetan flags:

Tibet: Comments from RFA listeners

From a Hunan man on the RFA Mandarin call-in program Listener Hotline, March 27:

The Tibet issue is analogous to forcing a woman to marry a man. The man may give the woman food, clothing, and shelter, but material things cannot replace spiritual values. She is a human being. The Dalai Lama is the rightful leader of the Tibetan people. He is like a parent to them, and yet the Chinese government vilifies him and kicked him out of his own home. Stability based on force cannot last.

Tibet: Reactions from inside China

The recent protests by Tibetans come amid growing calls among Chinese intellectuals for dialogue with the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing accuses of conspiring to split the motherland by secretly orchestrating the March 15 protests and riots in the Tibetan capital Lhasa, during which armed police opened fire on Tibetans, and where house-to-house searches and arrests are still continuing.

Sun Wenguang, a retired professor of eastern China’s Shandong University said the authorities were wrong to suppress the Tibetan protests using force.

“To crack down on the protests, especially to open fire, is a crime.