1 000 Tibetan protesters held
2008-08-14 22:00
Kathmandu - Stick-wielding police in Nepal's capital Kathmandu arrested at least 1 000 Tibetan exiles on Thursday as they protested outside a Chinese embassy building, police and witnesses said.
The protesters, many of them monks and nuns, said they wanted to highlight what they say are abuses in their Himalayan homeland during the ongoing Beijing Olympics.
"The world must open its eyes to the plight of us Tibetans rather than focusing on the Beijing Olympics," Wangchuk Tsering, 28, told AFP before joining the protest.
"I will continue to protest unless China guarantees human rights in Tibet."
Demonstrators wore T-shirts and jackets that read "China lies, Tibetan dies," "Stop genocide in Tibet," "Long live the Dalai Lama" and other slogans.
Police initially charged a group of about 1 000 Tibetans outside the Chinese visa and trade section building, hitting them with bamboo sticks. Half of them were arrested and the others were chased away.
'Kept on coming'
The protesters later regrouped, and police arrested more than 500 others throughout the day.
So far, "1 068 Tibetan protesters have been rounded up from around the protest site. They will be released later," said Kathmandu police chief Sarbendra Khanal.
"They kept on coming so we continued detaining them because they were in a place where protests are prohibited."
There have been almost daily pro-Tibet protests in Kathmandu since a crackdown in the Chinese-controlled region following violent unrest in March.
Nepal, which is home to around 20 000 exiled Tibetans, has banned all pro-Tibet protests as it seeks to maintain friendly ties with its giant northern neighbour China.
Tibetans began arriving in Nepal in large numbers in 1959 after the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, fled his homeland following a failed anti-Chinese uprising.