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PARIS : Protesters rallied in several European cities on Sunday to oppose China's crackdown on pro-independence activists in Tibet, some calling for a boycott of the Olympic Games in Beijing.
In The Hague, a group from among 400 protestors tried to storm the Chinese embassy.
About 100 of the demonstrators managed to tear down part of the gate surrounding the embassy and replace the Chinese flag with a Tibetan one before Dutch police stepped in.
Officers arrested two protesters, one of whom had managed to get inside the embassy building, said a police spokesman.
In Zurich, Swiss police used tear gas and rubber bullets on between 20 and 50 protesters who threw stones at the Chinese consulate, breaking several windows.
But most of the demonstrators - numbering between 700 and 2,000 according to different sources - protested peacefully and nobody had been hurt.
In Paris, a demonstration organised by France's Tibetan community drew some 500 people, carrying Tibetan flags and candles as a large police presence protected the nearby Chinese embassy.
In Prague, about 500 demonstrators, including former president Vaclav Havel and a leading member of the three-party ruling coalition, gathered outside the Chinese embassy to protest.
In the Italian capital of Rome, some 250 protesters demonstrated in front of the Chinese embassy, while at a rally in Brussels, an estimated 300 people turned up brandishing signs calling for a respect to human rights.
Speakers at the Belgian rally also urged a boycott of the Olympics Games to be held in August in the Chinese capital.
However, the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, said on Sunday he was opposed to any boycott of the Olympic Games.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who angered Beijing last September when she met the Dalai Lama told the daily Bild newspaper: "I do not believe in an Olympics boycott."
The conservative leader of Germany, China's biggest trading partner in Europe, said she believed a boycott would backfire and exacerbate the situation in China.
French junior minister for human rights, Rama Yade, was also sceptical about an Olympics boycott. "History has shown that boycotts are not always effective," she told Europe 1 radio.
"What we would like is that full light is shed on these events, as quickly as possible, and that peaceful demonstrators who were jailed be released," she added.
The unrest in Tibet followed three days of protests by hundreds of monks in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, India and elsewhere around the world marking the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule.
The violence has left at least 80 people dead, according to Tibet's leaders in exile, although the official death toll according to China's state-run media remained at 10. - AFP/de
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