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BEIJING - Protesters in Tibet will be challenged "firmly" and their separatist plot will fail, the chairman of the Himalayan region said here Saturday.
"The plot of the separatists will fail. We will challenge them firmly, according to law," the chairman of the Tibet government, Qiangba Puncog, told reporters on the sidelines of China's annual parliamentary session.
"We strongly condemn this kind of violence -- beating, stealing and burning."
"This is very clear: This is a separatist Dalai Lama clique, inside and outside the country."
His comments came a day after violence wracked the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, where police sought to quell the biggest anti-Chinese protests in two decades and some deaths were reported, officials and rights groups said.
The protests, which spread outside Tibet into other areas of China, came amid a growing international campaign by Tibetans to challenge Beijing's rule of the Himalayan region ahead of the Olympic Games in August.
Several people lost their lives and many others were injured in Lhasa on Friday, an official at the city's medical emergency centre told AFP, with Radio Free Asia reporting at least two people had been killed by Chinese bullets.
Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, said the protests were a result of public resentment of the "brute force" employed by China to maintain control of the region for more than 50 years.
China has ruled Tibet since 1951, a year after sending troops in to "liberate" the region from what it said was feudal rule.
The Dalai Lama fled to India following a failed 1959 uprising.The protests are the biggest since 1989, when current Chinese President Hu Jintao was the Communist Party chief of Tibet. -AFP/vm
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