Dalai Lama blasts 'brutal crackdown' in Tibet

DHARMSALA, India — Tibet has become "hell on earth" under Chinese oppression that has driven Tibetan culture to the verge of extinction, the Dalai Lama said Tuesday, in harsh comments marking the 50th anniversary of the failed uprising that sent him into exile.

Chinese martial law, and hard-line policies such as the Cultural Revolution, devastated the mountain region and left hundreds of thousands of Tibetans dead, he said, condemning the "brutal crackdown" in the region since protests last year turned violent.

"Even today, Tibetans in Tibet live in constant fear, and the Chinese authorities remain constantly suspicious of them," the Dalai Lama said in this Indian hill town, where he and the self-proclaimed government-in-exile have been based since shortly after fleeing their homeland.

In Tibet and restive western China, paramilitary police and soldiers swarmed cities and villages, on the alert for possible unrest on the anniversary.

In the Tibetan capital of Lhasa — where the uprisings of 1959 and 2008 started — was calm but tense, as was the rest of the region. Residents and businesses reported increased patrols of armed police. Tibetans and travelers in western China said police stepped up checks of identity cards.

China's authoritarian government sees Tibet, sitting atop rival India, as a strategic asset and a symbol of China's greatness. It has demonized the Dalai Lama as a violent separatist despite his insistence he wants only genuine autonomy within China.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu dismissed the Dalai Lama's comments as lies. "The Dalai group confuses right and wrong and spreads rumors," he said.

The heightened emotions underscored the stakes during the sensitive anniversary period. Tibetans in exile and in China worry that their identity, deeply rooted in their religion, is being undermined by Chinese rule, its religious restrictions and the influx of large numbers of Chinese migrants. Those concerns erupted last year, setting off a deadly anti-Chinese riot in Lhasa on March 14 and spreading to the provinces of Gansu, Qinghai and Sichuan.

In India, the Tibetan spiritual leader told a group of about 2,000 people, including Buddhist monks, Tibetan schoolchildren and a handful of foreign supporters, that the religion, culture, language and identity of successive generations of Tibetans faced "extinction." Tibetans in Tibet were living in "hell on earth," he added.

The group had gathered in a courtyard that separates the Dalai Lama's home from the town's main temple; monks blew enormous conch shells and long brass horns to herald his arrival.