Police beat and detained dozens of ethnic Tibetans during the latest protest in a restive region of western China, sparked when monks gathered to demand the release of fellow clergy, residents and an activist group said on Friday.
The authorities clamped down quickly after the protest on Thursday in Qinghai Province’s Tongren County, imposing an overnight curfew while police and armed paramilitary troops checked ID cards and residency permits, a hotel receptionist said.
Despite a massive deployment of security forces, anti-government protests have continued to pop up in Tibetan-inhabited areas of western China in the weeks following riots in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa.
Crowds gathered in Tongren after Buddhist monks calling for the release of fellow clergy were joined by shoppers at a local market, the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy reported.
A senior monk tried to mediate but police moved in, beating participants and detaining more than 100 monks and lay people, said the Dharmsala-based center.
Receptionists reached by phone at Tongren hotels confirmed the protest, saying a crowd had gathered near local county offices.
“Police even came to our hotel to check on people. No one was allowed outside after 12am,” one receptionist said.
The receptionists refused to give their names for fear of retaliation by authorities, who have reportedly offered rewards for information on people who leak news of protests and crackdowns.
A worker at a Tibetan restaurant near the monastery said police attacked protesters indiscriminately.
“They were randomly beating people,” said the woman, who gave her name as Duoma.
The monks had been demanding the release of those detained after a March 16 protest in which about 100 monks climbed a hillside above the monastery, burned incense and set off fireworks, while riot police massed outside.
The Tibetan government-in-exile also on Friday accused China’s government of using police dressed in Tibetan clothing and monks’ robes to instigate violent protests in order to justify its crackdown.
Most of the protesters involved in the violence that broke out in Lhasa on March 14 were unfamiliar to local people, Samdhong Rinpoche, the prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, told reporters.
“There are cases where people have seen the Chinese policemen in Tibetan dress and monks’ robes taking the leading role during the protest,” Rinpoche said.
He did not provide details.
It was not clear if Rinpoche was referring to photographs that have been circulating online for weeks showing uniformed Chinese troops holding red monks’ robes. Tibet experts have said those images were taken during movie shoots several years ago, when the soldiers were employed as extras.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home