Chinese soldiers executed three Tibetans for their role in unrest that shook the region last year, an exiles' organisation said on Thursday citing unnamed sources.

The Gu Chu Sum group of former Tibetan political prisoners said the two men and one woman were shot on Wednesday in the capital Lhasa, having been detained after riots broke out in Tibet in March 2008.

Fierce anti-China protests spread across Tibet and adjacent areas with Tibetan populations early last year, embarrassing the Chinese government as it prepared to host the Beijing Summer Olympics.

China blamed the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, for inciting the unrest and responded with a security crackdown that has remained in place.

"Tension is rising in Lhasa as more Tibetans have been arrested recently by the Chinese police," Gu Chu Sum said in a statement from the exiles' base in Dharamshala, north India.

"It is an act to crack down on Tibetans who had participated in 2008 mass uprising against the Chinese government," it said.

Chinese state media said in April that two people were sentenced to death over the unrest, the first such penalties reported.

China has ruled Tibet since 1951 after sending in troops to "liberate" the Himalayan region the previous year, and Beijing has long maintained that its rule ended a Buddhist theocracy that enslaved all but the religious elite.

China has said "rioters" during the unrest in 2008 were responsible for 21 deaths, while saying that its security forces killed only one "insurgent."

However, the exiled Tibetan government has said more than 200 Tibetans were killed in China's subsequent crackdown.

Share This Article With Planet Earth