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BUDDHA: Lhasa Monasteries Closed after Monk Shot, 40 Detained (TIN)
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Subject: BUDDHA: Lhasa Monasteries Closed after Monk Shot, 40 Detained (TIN)
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Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 10:10:29 +1000
I was about to send off the first item, but most of this issue is worth
reading. Regardless of your feelings about Buddhism as a way of life, this is
sickening repression.
If you're the letter-writing kind, or even if you're not, this is a good time
to start.
WARNING: No humor is to be found in this issue of Buddha.
>From World Tibet Network News - May 19, 1996
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1 Lhasa Monasteries Closed after Monk Shot, 40 Detained (TIN)
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17 May 1996
Tibet Information Network
The two main monasteries in Lhasa have been sealed off from the public by
the Chinese authorities following a major protest last week in Ganden
Monastery, 40 kilometres east of the Tibetan capital, which led to at least
forty arrests and a number of injuries, according to sources in the city.
The forty monks are reported to have been arrested following an incident at
Ganden monastery on 7th May after officials tried to impose new regulations
banning photographs of the Dalai Lama from Buddhist temples, and at least
one monk is reported to have been shot and wounded by police after fighting
broke out and stones were thrown.
At midday on Sunday the monastery of Drepung, 6 km west of Lhasa, was
closed by the authorities, apparently to prevent unrest spreading. Drepung,
the third of the great monasteries in the Lhasa valley, has been closed to
the public on Monday, and on the following day the temple of Ramoche was
also closed, preventing the public from entering and monks from leaving the
premises without permission. Both are still closed to outsiders, according
to reports today,
On Tuesday the main temple in Tibet, the Jokhang, in the heart of Lhasa,
staged a one-day shut-down in sympathy with the sealing off of the
monasteries.
An official of the Reilgious Affairs Bureau in Lhasa, contacted by
telephone today, would not comment on the reports.
A number of monks are said to have been beaten in incidents at Sera on
Monday and in Ramoche the following day when officials arrived to enforce
the order, according to unconfirmed reports from the city.
The unrest is believed to stem from attempts to implement a government
instruction, published in Tibet's main newspaper on 5th April, ordering
pictures of the exile leader the Dalai Lama to be removed from temples.
Display of the pictures had been tolerated since 1979 as part of a Chinese
decision to allow religious freedom, but a progressively more aggressive
stand has been emerging towards the Dalai Lama since late 1994.
The 5th April instruction also ordered leaders in all monasteries to be
replaced by monks known to be "patriotic", and attempts to implement this
demand are believed to have been combined with efforts to remove the
photographs. Government and party orders of this kind are carried out by
Work Teams, known in Chinese as "gongzuo dui" or in Tibetan as "ledun
rukhag", and it is one of these teams, composed of Party cadres, which
entered Ganden monastery on 7th May.
"This order was met with strong protests from the monks [which] resulted in
a fight between the Work Inspection Team and the monks," said the
Information Department of the exile Tibetan Government in a statement
issued on Wednesday from its base in northern India.
"In the scuffle, two Chinese police officials and two monks were injured.
As the situation worsened, the monks ran up the hills surrounding the
monastery and in self defence hurled down rocks at the Chinese officials."
The exile statement said that two monks were shot dead when police went on
to open fire on the monks, and that forty others were arrested. Sources in
Lhasa today confirmed accounts of unrest in Ganden last week, and estimated
arrests at between fifty and sixty, and confirmed that at least one monk
had received bullet wounds to the abdomen. There was no confirmation of any
fatalities. [end]
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2 UN Experts Criticise China As Governments Back Off (TIN)
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17 May 1996
Tibet Information Network
Within days of a UN decision not to criticise China's human rights record,
a UN team of experts which has ruled that China is illegally detaining
political prisoners has come under pressure from western governments to
limit its investigations. Meanwhile a separate UN team of experts has ruled
that reports of widespread torture in China are believable.
A UN resolution has implicitly criticised the experts who comprise the UN
Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, which was set up four years ago and
last year investigated 755 cases, a ten-fold increase over the previous
year. The Group had ruled that 697 of the cases it studied, mainly
involving political dissidents, were illegally detained and should be
released.
The published cases involved 22 countries, mostly with three or four cases
in each, except for Bahrain, which was found to have 513 illegal detainees,
and China, which had 68.
21 of the cases decided against China involved Tibetans, all of them
Buddhist nuns held for "exercising their right to freedom of thought,
conscience and religion" by staging demonstrations for independence or, in
the case of 12 of them, for singing songs praising the Dalai Lama. 42 of
the illegal detainees were Chinese democracy activists or trade union
organisers and five were Uighur or Kazakh dissidents from Xinjiang,
including the historian Turgun Almas and the novelist Kajikhumar Shabdan.
Last month France, Germany and Austria sponsored a resolution at the UN
which is seen by UN officials as an attempt to limit the powers of the
Working Group, the human rights body in the UN regarded as the most
effective in identifying abuses. The resolution was co-sponsored by
Austria, Sweden, Ireland, Switzerland and Belgium, and was passed without
dissent.
The resolution told the Working Group, chaired by the French jurist Louis
Joinet, to observe "the distinction between detention and imprisonment", a
phrase which means it should stop investigating cases of detainees once
they have received trials.
The Group, which has quasi-judicial powers and is one of the few human
rights bodies in the UN to investigate rather than report on alleged
abuses, currently studies cases after trial in countries where there is no
provision for an independent judiciary or a fair trial. Most of the cases
dealt with by the Group are of this type.
"There was a strong Cuban initiative to limit the mandate of the Working
Group and this resolution was a compromise solution," said a human rights
expert with close links to the Commission. "So far it is simply saying
attention should be paid to this distinction, but if the Working Group does
not do anything, next year it will be in real danger," said the expert, who
asked not to be named.
The Working Group has to survive an annual vote at the UN Commission on
Human Rights to continue its work and last year accused by China of
"arbitrary attacks against sovereign states" and "bitter political
prejudice" as part of a blockade by "certain western powers".
The pressure on the Group comes only days after the Commission decided not
to criticise China's human rights record. On 23rd April the Commission
decided by 27 votes to 20 not to consider a mildly worded resolution
criticising China, the sixth year that China has avoided criticism in the
UN since 1989, an achievement which was described in the Chinese press as a
"big victory for China".
The resolution, which was widely perceived as an attempt by western nations
to extend their influence, lost credibility as a human rights move after
the US refused to condemn the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon. Its
possibilities of success had already been weakened by the refusal of France
and Germany to endorse it until only a few days before the vote, apparently
in the hope of improving trade opportunities with Beijing.
- - China Criticised on Torture -
A second team of legal experts in the UN declared last week that reports of
widespread torture in China are credible and has asked China to set up a
genuinely independent judiciary and to change its laws so that torture is
banned. "according to information supplied by non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) torture may be practised on a widespread basis in
China", said the UN Committee against Torture last Monday 6th May.
It expressed concern about reports of what it called "the special
environment" in Tibet which appeared to have led to "conditions that result
in alleged maltreatment and even deaths of persons held in police custody
and in prisons in Tibet."
The Committee's recommendations include a request that China establish a
rehabilitation centre for torture victims in Beijing and other cities in
conjunction with the UN.
The Committee against Torture is more powerful than the Working Group
because it is a legal body rather than a political organ, and has to assess
member states' compliance with international laws which prohibit torture.
Last week it considered China's four-yearly report on its implementation of
the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Human or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment, a treaty which China signed in 1986 and ratified
in September 1988.
The 10-member panel of judges and legal experts on the Committee drew
attention to reports that cases of police abuse in China "often did not
result in investigations" and stated that some of China's methods of
capital punishment might be in breach of international standards, a
reference to reports of public parading of prisoners and alleged sale of
prisoners' organs, which China denies.
The panel, which does not include any government representatives, noted
some improvements in China's efforts to combat torture, mainly its reform
of the Criminal Procedure Law announced in March, which from next January
will reduce the length of time a suspect can be detained without charge
from several months to 37 days. However, some Committee members disputed
Chinese claims that the new laws provided a presumption of innocence,
noting that they still require defence lawyers to prove that a suspect is
innocent.
- - Tibet Policeman Convicted -
The Committee also described as positive reports that a number of police
officers had been prosecuted for acts of torture in China, referring to a
recent case in Tibet where for the first known time a policeman has been
convicted of beating a prisoner.
China's Procuratorial Daily had reported on 29th April that Chungdag, a
Tibetan who was head of the county police force in Kyirong, Southern Tibet,
had tied up, beaten and abused a Tibetan woman during a night-long torture
session in January 1995, according to a Reuters report.
Tenzin Wangmo suffered injuries to the legs, buttocks, and wrists that
required 65 days' treatment in hospital following the attacks by the police
chief and two others, who had been acting on the request of a court
official named Buchung, the newspaper said. It did not say if the
accomplices were prosecuted but added that Chungdag was also convicted of
illegally detaining four officials for 87 hours in November 1994.
The Committee did not comment on the fact that the Tibetan policeman was
only given a suspended sentence. "Not all acts of torture and ill-treatment
[in China] are punishable by law and the punishments, when imposed, are
often light," Amnesty International said in its report to the Committee,
which noted that torturers can receive as little as 15 days detention in
Chinese law.
The Committee criticised China for failing to make all forms of torture
illegal, despite an identical request by the same Committee three years
ago. "There has been a failure to incorporate a definition of torture in
China's domestic legal system in terms consistent with the provisions of
the Convention", Peter Burns, the Canadian expert on the panel, told China
on behalf of the Committee. Chinese criminal law only specifically bans
torture that is used to extract confessions, whereas the Convention
requires it to outlaw torture for any purpose, including intimidation,
discrimination and punishment.
China's Ambassador Wu Jianmin said that international law is incorporated
automatically in Chinese legislation. In China "the law deems torture to be
a criminal act. There is no circumstance that may ever be invoked to
justify its use," China stated in its report to the Committee.
- - Role of NGOs -
Underlying the discussion between the Committee and Mr Wu was a debate over
the role of non-governmental organisations, whose influence at the UN has
been attacked by China as well as by other nations accused of human rights
violations. Experts on the committee had earlier described reports from
some human rights organisations as "sources that have proved to be very
reliable".
The Ambassador said he felt "a bit uneasy" about some of the Committee's
conclusions because the panel had relied on information provided by NGOs.
"Their sources are those people called dissidents," Mr Wu told the
committee. "These are people who make a living out of accusing and blaming
China." He described Amnesty International as "a politically motivated
organisation" and the prison reform campaigner Harry Wu as a "former thief
and a rapist".
When the Committee's Chairman, Dipandra Mouelle, a Cameronian appeals
judge, read into the record a section from an Amnesty report listing 41
specific cases of torture, Ambassador Wu walked out of the room, apparently
to indicate his disapproval. The cases had all been published in an
official Chinese paper, the Henan Legal Daily, in 1992.
The Chinese delegation said that 412 cases of torture were investigated by
the authorities in 1995, 3 more than in the previous year. It would not
give figures for executions in China, saying only that of 545,000 people
who received criminal sentences in China in 1995, 43% were sentenced either
to death or to imprisonment for over 4 years.
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Note: list of prisoners declared by the UN to be arbitarily detained is
available from TIN.
Note: Correction to previous update ("Secret Film of Deforestation", 10th
May): In paragraph 3 "2 or 3 metres" should be "2 or 3 feet".
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3 Second Serious Incident in Lhasa Area: 30 Nuns and up to
50 Others "Severely Beaten" (TIN)
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18 May 1996
From: Tibet Information Network
A serious incident has taken place in the Lhasa area as monks and nuns
continue to resist attempts by the authorities to impose a ban on display
of photographs of the exiled Dalai Lama. This is the second major
confrontation reported within a week and suggests police violence may have
been more widespread than so far believed.
The latest clash with the Chinese authorities took place on Tuesday 14th
November, and left up to 80 people, at least 30 of them women, with serious
injuries, according to an eyewitness account from the main Lhasa hospital.
It followed a major disturbance at the monastery of Ganden, 40 km east of
Lhasa, on 7th May, where two monks are believed to have been shot dead by
police, according to unconfirmed reports. There are confirmed reports that
at least three of the 500 monks at Ganden were shot and wounded, one of
them seriously, and a fourth is in a serious condition after being beaten
by police on the head. At least five other Tibetans involved in that
incident are believed to have broken limbs, and there are unconfirmed
reports that a number of Chinese officials were also injured.
News of the latest incident emerged when two truckloads of wounded monks
and nuns were delivered to the emergency unit of the Lhasa People's
Hospital No.1 at 11.30 pm on Tuesday night. Approximately 30 women and 15
men were unloaded from one of the trucks and taken into the hospital for
treatment, accompanied by a police escort.
"It was 11.30 at night and two big Chinese trucks came to the emergency
unit at the hospital," said Takeo Fujimoto, a Japanese tourist who was
looking after his American girlfriend in the hospital that night. "They
took the people out of one truck, maybe around 40-50 people, more than half
of them young nuns."
"Some people were walking, some people could not walk. They were holding
each other, and some were crying or screaming," said Mr Fujimoto, speaking
by phone from his hotel in Kathmandu, where he arrived by plane earlier
today.
The Tibetans appeared to be seriously wounded, according to Mr Fujimoto,
who watched them being taken into the emergency unit. "I am one hundred per
cent sure that somebody beat up them up. It was not like a car accident.
Their whole faces were sore and covered with blood, and some people could
not move."
The second truck was not allowed to unload its wounded at the hospital and
officials told the driver to go elsewhere, but Mr Fujimoto said there were
signs of seriously injured people in the vehicle. "On the other truck I saw
some legs hanging out from the back of the truck. They did not move," he
said. "The truck left the courtyard, I don't know where they went."
There were a few older women amongst the wounded who were accepted at the
hospital and also some lay men wearing traditional Tibetan lay clothes and
with long braided hair, also badly wounded, but most were monks or nuns in
red robes, according to the tourist.
30 of the wounded he saw were lay women or nuns, and about 15 were monks or
laymen. "More than half were young nuns, all of them very, very young,
maybe teenagers, and one was a young girl who had been beaten in the face.
It was unbelievable", he said.
The wounded were escorted by about five men in uniform, probably policemen.
"They did not do anything except to talk to the doctors. They were just
watching them," he said, noting that they appeared to be officers.
There is no information about where the beatings had taken place, but they
are believed to be part of resistance by Tibetans to the order to remove
Dalai Lama photographs from shrines.
There are unconfirmed reports that monks were beaten at Ramoche temple in
Lhasa on Tuesday, and some sources claim that there was unrest at Sera
monastery two days previously. Both institutions are within 2 km of the
hospital but neither institution includes nuns. There are three nunneries
near the hospital - Chubsang, Garu and Michungri - which have a long
history of pro-independence activism and initial reports of unrest at Garu
nunnery have been received and may be related to the incident.
There are no reports of major street incidents in Lhasa in recent weeks,
and the mixture of lay people, monks and nuns amongst the wounded suggests
that the incident took place at an important pilgrimage site near the
Tibetan capital or at a number of locations on the same day.
The incidents are all a response to the ban, first announced in print on
5th April, on the display of Dalai Lama photographs in monasteries and
temples. The incident led to the protests at Ganden monastery on 7th May,
when a dispute with officials sent to impose the ban led to stones being
thrown at the officials, and later to shooting by police.
Photographs of the exiled Tibetan leader have been tolerated by the Chinese
authorities as objects of religious worship since 1979 and the new policy
indicates a shift towards confrontation by China in its approach to the
pro- independence movement in Tibet. Tibetan nationalists have staged over
170 demonstrations there since unrest re-emerged in 1987, and there are
unconfirmed reports of a further 50 incidents. Although the number of nuns
in Tibet is probably less than 10% of the number of monks, 73 of the
protests, or one third, have been staged by nuns.
- - Tourists Asked to Leave Hospital -
Mr Fujimoto, a 37 year old rug merchant from Kyushu in Japan, was on his
first visit to Tibet with his girlfriend Lisa Lumbardi. The couple, who
arrived in mid-April, had been intending to visit Mount Kailash in western
Tibet when Ms Lumbardi became seriously ill with a combination of pneumonia
and severe kidney infection.
At 2am on Wednesday morning, two hours after the wounded monks and nuns
were brought in, doctors asked Ms Lumbardi to leave the hospital the next
morning in order to make space for the emergency cases, although she was
unable to walk at the time and was in acute pain. "It was a very unpleasant
situation," said Ms Lumbardi, who was later offered a pain-killing
injection, on condition she paid an extra fee.
"They said they had done everything. There was not a whole lot of
conversation but it was very clear they wanted us to go," said Ms Lumbardi,
age 26, who comes from Texas. Questioned about the standard of treatment,
she said that the medical treatment had not been effective and described
the conditions as "very dirty".
"I feel that they panicked, and that lack of space was not the reason they
wanted us to go," Mr Fujimoto said, suggesting that staff did not want
foreigners to see the injured monks and nuns. The hospital has 500 beds and
makes a considerable income from treating foreigners. There are three other
hospitals in Lhasa, including an Army hospital which is of a similar size
and is little used, plus a hospital for women and children, and one for a
traditional Tibetan medicine. [end]
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4 Correction (TIN)
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19 May 1996
Tibet Information Network
Correction to TIN News Update of 2100 hrs 18 May 1996b ("Second Serious
Incident in Lhasa Area: 30 Nuns and up to 50 Others "Severely Beaten"):
Change "14th November" in paragraph 2 to "14th May"
First two paragraphs should read:
A serious incident has taken place in the Lhasa area as monks and nuns
continue to resist attempts by the authorities to impose a ban on display
of photographs of the exiled Dalai Lama. This is the second major
confrontation reported within a week and suggests police violence may have
been more widespread than so far believed.
The latest clash with the Chinese authorities took place on Tuesday 14th
May, and left up to 80 people, at least 30 of them women, with serious
injuries, according to an eyewitness account from the main Lhasa hospital.
It followed a major disturbance at the monastery of Ganden, 40 km east of
Lhasa, on 7th May, where two monks are believed to have been shot dead by
police, according to unconfirmed reports. ...
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5 Major Escaltion of violent repress in Tibet (TSG-UK)
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Press Release May 19, 1996
Tibet Support Group.UK
071 359 7573 Phone
071 354 1026 Fax
MAJOR ESCALATION OF VIOLENT REPRESSION IN TIBET.
EYE-WITNESS ACCOUNTS OF INJURED AND PROBABLE FATALITIES.
WORST SINCE MARTIAL LAW OF 1989.
CALLS FOR PROTEST FROM MICHAEL HESELTINE IN CHINA.
At the same time as Michael Heseltine leads a massive trade delegation to
China with over 250 business people from the UK reports have been received
of the worst escalation of violence in Tibet since the martial law of 1989.
The London based independent information service Tibet Information Network
have spoken to an eye-witness who has just left the country. The Japanese
tourist, Takeo Fujimoto, was with his with American girlfriend at the Lhasa
People's No.1 Hospital at 11.30pm on Tuesday 14 May when he saw truckloads
of wounded buddhist monks and nuns arrived:
"It was 11.30 at night and two big Chinese trucks came to the emergency
unit at the hospital," said Takeo Fujimoto, a Japanese tourist who was
looking after his American girlfriend in the hospital that night. "They
took the people out of one truck, maybe around 40-50 people, more than half
of them young nuns."
"Some people were walking, some people could not walk. They were holding
each other, and some were crying or screaming," said Mr Fujimoto, speaking
by phone from his hotel in Kathmandu, where he arrived by plane earlier
today.
The Tibetans appeared to be seriously wounded, according to Mr Fujimoto,
who watched them being taken into the emergency unit. "I am one hundred per
cent sure that somebody beat up them up. It was not like a car accident.
Their whole faces were sore and covered with blood, and some people could
not move."
The second truck was not allowed to unload its wounded at the hospital and
officials told the driver to go elsewhere, but Mr Fujimoto said there were
signs of seriously injured people in the vehicle. "On the other truck I saw
some legs hanging out from the back of the truck. They did not move," he
said. "The truck left the courtyard, I don't know where they went."
There were a few older women amongst the wounded who were accepted at the
hospital and also some lay men wearing traditional Tibetan lay clothes and
with long braided hair, also badly wounded, but most were monks or nuns in
red robes, according to the tourist.
30 of the wounded he saw were lay women or nuns, and about 15 were monks or
laymen. "More than half were young nuns, all of them very, very young,
maybe teenagers, and one was a young girl who had been beaten in the face.
It was unbelievable", he said.
The wounded were escorted by about five men in uniform, probably policemen.
"They did not do anything except to talk to the doctors. They were just
watching them," he said, noting that they appeared to be officers.
There is no information about where the beatings had taken place, but they
are believed to be part of resistance by Tibetans to the order to remove
Dalai Lama photographs from shrines.
This incident follows a major incident at one of the biggest Tibetan
monasteries, Ganden, on 7 May. Reports are of two monks being shot dead,
and another shot and seriously wounded. Five other monks are seriously
injured as a result of beatings.
The protests have been sparked by the decision of the Chinese authorities
to remove pictures of the Dalai Lama from monasteries. The authorities have
tolerated the display of pictures even though their sale has been
prohibited for several years.
The escalation of repression has been marked since the crisis over the
identification of the new Panchen Lama. In May 1995 the Dalai Lama's
announced the discovery of the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama. The
Chinese authorities immediately denounced the Dalai Lama and his candidate,
who disappeared and has not been heard of since.
Timothy Nunn, General Secretary of the Tibet Support Group UK says:
"We have many concerns about this serious escalation of the repression in
Tibet. Our immediate concern is for the safety of those who have seriously
injured over the past few days. Past experience is of people with life
threatening injury being scared to go hospitals because of fear of arrest.
The Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine must raise this issue during
his talks with Chinese leaders in Beijing. It would be unacceptable for him
not to do so. He could make a great deal of difference whilst in China."
A spokesperson for Mr Heseltine has revealed that he has no plans for
structured dialogue on human rights issues. Tibet Support Group UK have
ensured reports of the incidents have been directly to Mr Heseltine. The
Deputy Prime Minister has been urged, as a matter of urgency, to seek
assurances from the Chinese government that:
- - the injured will receive full medical treatment, without prejudice
- - those arrested as result of their involvement in peaceful protest are
immediately and unconditionally released
- - the campaign for the removal of pictures of the Dalai Lama stop immediately
- - the rights of the Tibetan people to religious expression and to peaceful
protest and assembly be respected.
The full text of the letter is available from Tibet Support Group UK.
Contact: Timothy Nunn on +44 (0)171 359 7573 or 0378 90 11 98
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Text of letter to Michael Heseltine:
By facsimile to Beijing: 86 10 532 1937
19 May 1996
Dear Deputy Prime Minister
We are writing to you as a matter of urgency to bring to your attention
reports of a major escalation of violent repression in Tibet. We implore
you to use your good office and presence in China to convey our concerns to
the Chinese government.
In the worst reports of violence since the martial law of 1989 the London
based independent information service Tibet Information Network has
released eye-witness accounts of injuries and probable fatalities in a
major incident in the Lhasa area.
This is another instance in one of a series, and we are convinced that
these abuses are continuing during your visit.
A Japanese tourist reported two truckloads of wounded monks and nuns being
delivered to the Lhasa People's Hospital No. 1 at 11.30 pm on Tuesday 14
May. Around 30 women and 15 men were unloaded from the first truck and
taken into the hospital for treatment. The second truck was not allowed to
unload its wounded at the hospital, but it was reported that there were
signs of seriously injured people in the vehicle, including possible
fatalities.
This is the second reported major disturbance in recent days in the Lhasa
area, as monks and nuns continue to resist attempts by the Chinese
authorities to ban the displaying of photographs of the exiled Dalai Lama.
This most recent account confirms the increasing brutality used by the
Chinese in the history of religious repression in Tibet.
We ask you as a matter of urgency to seek assurances from the Chinese
government that:
- - the injured will receive full medical treatment, without prejudice
- - those arrested as result of their involvement in peaceful protest are
immediately and unconditionally released
- - the campaign for the removal of pictures of the Dalai Lama stop immediately
- - the rights of the Tibetan people to religious expression and to peaceful
protest and assembly be respected.
We urge you to vigorously pursue these human rights abuses with China as a
matter of extreme urgency. Your current visit to China has coincidentally
given you a major opportunity to raise this pressing issue and secure
assurances from the Chinese government for the end of this series of
abuses.
Yours sincerely
Timothy Nunn
General Secretary
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
6 Tibetans demonstrate in London
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Tibet Support Group-UK and the Tibetan Community in Britain
demonstrated out the Chinese embassy in London today against the new
repression in Tibet by the Chinese authorities.
Over 30 Tibetans and their supporters braved the rain and the cold weather
and staged a three hours demonstration.
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
8 UN Human Rights Chief to visit China (ICT)
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Jose Ayala
Lasso, has said that he hopes to visit China soo. Addressing members of the
National Press Club here in Washington, D.C. this morning, the High
Commissioner said he had recieved a formal invitation from China. He,
however, did not mention any specific dates.
=============================================
end WTN 96/05/19
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