Chinese security forces fired indiscriminately on Tibetan protesters in 2008 and beat and kicked others until they lay motionless on the ground, a rights group said in a report detailing unrest that the government says it suppressed legally.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released yesterday — using rare eyewitness accounts — examines China’s crackdown on the broadest anti-government uprising the country has faced from Tibetans in nearly 50 years.