Foreigners banned from Tibet
2008-03-17 12:26
Beijing - China has suspended permits for foreigners to travel to its Tibet Autonomous Region, an official said on Monday, as a Tibetan exile group reported mass arrests ahead of a deadline for protesters to surrender to police in the regional capital.
Officials stopped issuing the travel permits, which are not required for any other Chinese region, because of safety concerns, Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the regional government, told reporters in Beijing.
"We also suggest foreign tourists now in Tibet leave in the coming days," state media quoted Ju Jianhua, head of the region's foreign affairs office, as saying.
The German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau reported that staff from international non-governmental organisations were ordered to leave Lhasa by Monday, raising fears that troops could toughen their crackdown on the protesters once a deadline for protesters to surrender passed at midnight on Monday.
Hundreds arrested
The India-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy on Monday said that paramilitary police had already arrested hundreds of Tibetans over the weekend in Lhasa.
The police reportedly detained all former political prisoners and conducted house-to-house searches, focussing on young Tibetan men.
Many Tibetan residents reported young men from their families being "beaten and dragged away" by security forces, the centre said.
Lhasa residents confirmed to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that police and troops were checking the identities of all pedestrians and searching homes
"There are a lot of military vehicles and troops on the street," a Tibetan primary school teacher said by telephone.
"They check the identities of people walking on the street very carefully," the teacher said.
New protests
Tibetan exile groups reported several new protests at monastery towns in other Tibetan areas of China.
The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said some 700 teenagers protested on Monday outside a local police station in Hongyuan county, Sichuan province, after about 40 students from their school were beaten and detained for calling for the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader, to be allowed to return to Tibet.
Qiangba Puncog said that 13 people had died since rioting erupted in Lhasa on Friday, rejecting reports by the Tibetan government in exile, which said it had confirmed at least 80 deaths in the city. - Sapa-dpa
- SAPA