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Tibetan protesters arrested in Nepal

AFP

KATHMANDU, Nepal, 14 August 2008—Police arrest a Tibetan monk in Kathmandu on 14 August 2008. Tibetan protesters were trying to storm the Chinese consular office in Kathmandu in protest of the Chinese actions in Tibet.Gopal Chitrakar/Reuters

The protesters, many of them monks and nuns, said they wanted to highlight what they say are abuses in their Himalayan homeland during the ongoing Beijing Olympics.

“The world must open its eyes to the plight of us Tibetans rather than focusing on the Beijing Olympics,” Wangchuk Tsering, 28, told AFP before joining the protest.

“I will continue to protest unless China guarantees human rights in Tibet.”

Demonstrators wore T-shirts and jackets that read “China lies, Tibetan dies,” “Stop genocide in Tibet,” “Long live the Dalai Lama” and other slogans.

Police initially charged a group of about 1,000 Tibetans outside the Chinese visa and trade section building, hitting them with bamboo sticks. Half of them were arrested and the others were chased away.

The protesters later regrouped, and police arrested more than 500 others throughout the day.

So far, “1,068 Tibetan protesters have been rounded up from around the protest site. They will be released later this evening,” said Kathmandu police chief Sarbendra Khanal.

“They kept on coming so we continued detaining them because they were in a place where protests are prohibited.”

There have been almost daily pro-Tibet protests in Kathmandu since a crackdown in the Chinese-controlled region following violent unrest in March.

Nepal, which is home to around 20,000 exiled Tibetans, has banned all pro-Tibet protests as it seeks to maintain friendly ties with its giant northern neighbour China.

Tibetans began arriving in Nepal in large numbers in 1959 after the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, fled his homeland following a failed anti-Chinese uprising.

Copyright © 2008 Agence France Presse

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