Chinese security forces shot dead two Tibetan brothers who had been on the run since taking part in anti-government protests two weeks ago in southwest China, a US-funded broadcaster reported yesterday.
Radio Free Asia said the two — 40-year-old monk Yeshe Rigsal and his 38-year-old brother, Yeshe Samdrub — were killed on Thursday in the high-altitude pasturelands used by nomadic herders where they had fled after the Jan. 23 protest in Luhuo County in Sichuan Province. Radio Free Asia cited sources in the area and in the Tibetan exile community in India.
Luhuo and other Tibetan areas of the province have been sealed off due to recurring, sometimes violent protests, so the Radio Free Asia report could not be independently confirmed. Telephone calls yesterday to the Chinese Communist Party propaganda department and the public security office in Luhuo rang unanswered, as did a call to the party propaganda department in Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, which oversees the county.
In the Luhuo protest, Tibetans besieged a police station, drawing fire that killed at least one person. It marked a return to the mass anti-government demonstrations periodically used by Tibetans in recent decades to protest Chinese rule. A widespread rebellion across Tibetan areas in 2008 prompted China to smother the region with police and tighten controls on the Buddhist practices and the clergy that are at the core of Tibetan identity.
Radio Free Asia also reported another immolation — that of a yet-to-be identified monk on Thursday in Yushu, another restive Tibetan area in Qinghai Province.
In another protest, several hundred monks from Sekha monastery in Yushu staged a demonstration on Thursday, holding banners and shouting slogans demanding human rights and the release of political prisoners, according to accounts from overseas Tibet lobbying groups and a video provided by a person with contacts with the Tibetan community.
The person said that the monks originally planned to march to the county seat more than 2km away, but that local herders stopped them, worrying that the monks would be arrested. Officials, police and troops arrived and persuaded the monks to return to the monastery, said the person, who did not want to be identified for fear of being punished by the authorities.
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