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More than 20 Tibetans arrested after anti-China protests

AFP

Chinese police have detained more than 20 Tibetans in southwestern China after violently breaking up protests on 16 February 2009 in Lithang.File photo/AFP/Tibet

Chinese police have detained more than 20 Tibetans in southwestern China after violently breaking up protests in support of the exiled Dalai Lama, activist groups said on Wednesday.

The clashes marked the first reported major outbreak of unrest in the run-up to the highly sensitive 50th anniversary next month of a failed uprising against Chinese rule that sent the spiritual leader into exile.

The protests in Litang county, a Tibetan region of remote Sichuan province that borders Tibet, first flared on Sunday with a solo demonstration by a monk, the London-based group Free Tibet said, quoting unnamed sources.

After shouting in a local market for the Dalai Lama’s return, Lobsang Lhundup was joined by other protesters, prompting police to attack with batons and rifle butts, the group said.

A larger protest involving as many as 300 people took place in the same area the following day, resulting in more beatings and arrests, according to Free Tibet and the India-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD).

“All the Tibetan protesters were brutally beaten, manhandled and forcibly loaded into military trucks by (police),” the India-based Tibetan group said in a news release.

Free Tibet said 24 people had been arrested, while the TCHRD said 23 were known to have been taken into custody.

Many Tibetans were badly injured in the clashes, the groups said.

Protesters had also been calling for a boycott of Tibetan New Year celebrations in protest over Chinese control, they said.

Litang, or Lithang in Tibetan, in the Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, is known as a flourishing centre of Tibetan culture, due in particular to a popular annual horse festival attended by Tibetan nomads.

It is in a vast region largely cut off by a Chinese security crackdown following protests last March on the Tibetan uprising’s 49th anniversary that flared into deadly violence across the Tibetan plateau.

A local businessman in Litang who witnessed the latest protests in the area said police had cracked down in their wake.

“The county is under martial law, with armed police patrolling the streets. It’s very quiet here now,” said the man, whose name has been withheld by AFP to avoid possible police retaliation against him.

Government officials and police in Litang either denied the reports or refused to comment when contacted by AFP.

The Dalai Lama, 73, said last week Tibet was “very tense” as the 14 March anniversary of the 1959 uprising neared, adding that “at any moment there can be an outburst of violence”.

China’s foreign ministry denied that a day later, saying Tibetan regions were “stable”.

Tibet’s government-in-exile has said more than 200 Tibetans were killed and about 1,000 hurt in an ongoing crackdown following last year’s violence.

China has reported killing one Tibetan “insurgent” amid last year’s unrest and that “rioters” were responsible for 21 deaths.

China has ruled Tibet since 1951, a year after sending troops in to “liberate” the remote Himalayan region from serfdom.

Copyright © 2009 AFP

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