China has barred foreigners from traveling to Tibet until after sensitive Oct. 1 celebrations marking the 60th birthday of communist China, a government tourism office and travel agents said yesterday.
A woman official at the official Lhasa Tourism Bureau in the regional capital said the ban would officially go into effect yesterday.
“Passes for foreign travelers to enter Tibet will be suspended from Sept. 24 to Oct. 8. That’s according to a notice from the Tibet Tourism Bureau,” said the woman, who refused to give her name.
She said the notice contained no further information and no reason for the measure.
Officials with the regional government and Tibet Tourism Bureau refused to comment.
However, travel agents said the ban was already in place.
“It started from Monday, according to the notice from the Tibet Tourism Bureau. Passes for foreign travelers are suspended until Oct. 8,” said a woman staff member at the Tibet Youth Travel Service.
Staff at two other major travel agencies also confirmed the ban.
The move is the latest sign of intense official concern over security ahead of National Day, which will mark 60 years since Mao Zedong (毛澤東) proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China at Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
The government already has sharply ramped up security in the capital, putting thousands of extra police on the streets ahead of the festivities, which will include a military parade, fireworks and mass performances at the square.
State media reported on Monday that outgoing flights would be halted at Beijing’s airport during the parade, and retailers have said they have been banned from selling kitchen knives after two recent stabbings near the square.
Foreign tourists must obtain special permission from the Chinese government to enter Tibet, the remote Himalayan region where resentment against Chinese control has seethed for decades.
China has banned foreign tourists from visiting Tibet before, including after deadly anti-Chinese riots that erupted in Lhasa and across the Tibetan plateau in March last year, triggering a massive Chinese security clampdown.
Beijing also barred foreigners in March of this year during the tense 50th anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against China that sent the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, into exile.
The bans and tight security in Tibet since last year’s unrest have devastated the picturesque Buddhist region’s tourism industry, state media said.
Reports have said visitor arrivals dropped to 2.2 million last year, compared with four million the year before.
Chinese authorities are currently grappling with seething ethnic unrest in the restive western region of Xinjiang, including a wave of mysterious syringe attacks.
Beijing has blamed Uighurs for the attacks.
Staff at several major state-run travel agents handling Xinjiang tours said yesterday they had so far received no notice of any ban on foreign tourists to the region.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
DEFIANT: Ukraine and the EU voiced concern that ICC member Mongolia might not execute an international warrant for Putin’s arrest over war crimes in Ukraine Russian President Vladimir Putin was yesterday visiting Mongolia with no sign that the host country would bow to calls to arrest him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The trip is Putin’s first to a member country of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it issued the warrant about 18 months ago. Ahead of his visit, Ukraine called on Mongolia to hand Putin over to the court in The Hague, and the EU expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the warrant. A spokesperson for Putin last week said that the Kremlin