Click here to see the first images of the condemned Tibetans on FRANCE 24’s ‘The Observers’ site.

In the first verdicts to be delivered in the case, the Intermediate People's Court of Lhasa sentenced 30 people, including six Buddhist monks, to jail terms ranging from three years to life in prison, according to the official Chinese media.

Pictures of the open session released Tuesday showed the defendants lined up before a phalanx of security officials in a packed courtroom.

Reporting from the Chinese capital of Beijing Tuesday, FRANCE 24’s Sébastien Le Belzic, spoke of “harsh sentences and summary justice.”

“The court upheld the accusations of murder, arguing that the riots had left 19 dead, all of whom were Chinese,” he said.

China also accuses the rioters of injuring 382 civilians and 241 police officers.

According to Beijing authorities, Tibetan insurgents set fire to seven schools, five hospitals and 120 dwellings, while also plundering close to a thousand shops, causing total damage worth more than 244 million Yuan (over 22 million euros).

“An opaque trial”

Details of individual sentences were only disclosed to the public in the case of two detainees. These were Soi’nam Norbu, a driver employed by a Lhasa estate agent, and a monk named Basang, both of whom were given life terms. “This kind of trial is highly opaque,” said Le Belzic. A court official told the AFP that details of sentences would be made public later in the day.

Protests erupted in Lhasa on March 10, on the anniversary of the 1959 anti-Chinese uprising, before escalating four days later. They then spread to western China, home to a sizeable Tibetan minority.

Chinese authorities accuse the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, of fomenting the riots in order to scupper Beijing’s summer Olympics. From its base in India, the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile claims the Chinese crackdown on protests has left at least 203 dead and led to the arrest of over 2,000 people. According to Chinese police, the number of rioters arrested was 400.

“We’re expecting further sentences in the coming days and weeks,” said Sébastien Le Belzic.

Encouraged by the international community, Beijing has offered to start talks with Tibetan exiles, in a rare gesture of opening. Yet Chinese authorities also urged the Dalai Lama to “put an end” to the violence ahead of the Olympic Games. “We hope the Dalai Lama can seize on this opportunity, recognise the facts and change his attitude by taking concrete measures to put an end to the acts of violence and the attempts to scupper the Olympic Games,” said a spokesperson for the foreign affairs ministry in Beijing.

Though welcoming the offer for dialogue, the Dalai Lama has asked for “serious talks” with China. A meeting merely designed to ease concern among the international community, he said, would be of no use.