Over 1,200 Tibetans still missing after crackdown - report - Mon Mar 9, 2009
Peter Terpstra
Mon Mar 9, 2009
By Matthias Williams
DHARAMSALA (Reuters) - More than 1,200 Tibetans are still missing since a
Chinese crackdown on the region after protests in March last year, a report by
the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) said on Monday.
Security forces arrested thousands of Tibetans, often seizing them in the
middle of the night on flimsy evidence of being "splittist" and tortured them,
the new report said.
"There is still an intense climate of fear in Lhasa today," Kate Saunders, one
of the authors of the report, told Reuters.
"(Tibetans) have made tremendous steps to show that they answer to the Dalai
Lama, not the Chinese state."
The report was released a day before the Dalai Lama speaks on the 50th
anniversary of the failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, which led to
the Tibetan spiritual leader's escape to northern India in 1959.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry and Public Security Ministry did not immediately
comment, nor were they immediately able to provide a number for Tibetans
detained but not formally charged.
Tibetans have staged more than 130 protests since major unrest began in the
Tibetan plateau in March last year, the report said.
China regularly defends its rule of Tibet, saying it ended centuries of
serfdom in 1959 and has since poured in development money and vastly improved
the standard of life.
The Tibetan government-in-exile says more than 200 people were killed in the
Chinese crackdown since last year in and around Lhasa.
The ICT, an activist organisation with ties to the exile Tibetan community,
based its report on literature banned inside China and accounts of witnesses.
"Detainees were subjected to harsh beating and their major body joints --
hands and legs -- were dislocated as soon as they were brought into custody,"
the report said, quoting a woman from Tibet who could not be named for
security reasons.
"Beatings, including stomping on their entire body, and electrocution by
electric prods.
"Those who have been charged were in for a more brutal torture, including
inserting bamboo through their nails and fingers tied tight and beaten."
China's state-owned Xinhua news agency announced the opening of what it called
"the first website dedicated to human rights in Tibet". The website, in
Chinese, English, German and French, features interviews with Tibetans but no
Tibetan-language content.
A popular Chinese-language website focusing on Tibetan culture was shut last
week for "upgrading and maintenance", while overseas groups said the webmaster
of a Tibetan-language site also focusing on Tibetan culture was detained last
week.
http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-38414920090309?pageNumber=
2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true