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Tibetan monks storm media tour
09/04/2008 09:13 - (SA)
Xiahe - A group of 15 Tibetan Buddhist monks interrupted a state-sponsored media tour of a riot-hit region of western China on Wednesday, demanding the return of the Dalai Lama and yelling that they had no human
rights.
In the second such incident in as many months, the monks,
carrying a banned Tibetan flag, burst out of a building at the
Labrang monastery in the town of Xiahe, in the northwestern
province of Gansu, and rushed across a plaza to a group of 20
visiting Chinese and foreign journalists.
"The Dalai Lama has to come back to Tibet. We are not
asking for Tibetan independence, we are just asking for human
rights, we have no human rights now," one monk told the
reporters in Chinese.
Many of the monks had their heads covered in robes. They
said other monks were still being held by authorities and that
armed plainclothes agents were stationed throughout Xiahe.
Hundreds of monks from the Labrang monastery led a march
through Xiahe last month, after riots erupted in the Tibetan
regional capital Lhasa on March 14.
Last month, about 30 monks stormed a briefing by a temple
administrator for a select group of foreign journalists at the
Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, shouting that the reporters were being
lied to.
China has said Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama,
and his associates are behind the unrest. The Dalai Lama, who
fled into exile in India in 1959 after an abortive uprising
against Chinese rule, has denied the accusation.
- Reuters
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