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BEIJING: Chinese police fired tear gas to disperse a
second day of protests in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa by hundreds
of Buddhist monks demanding the region’s independence, Radio Free
Asia reported Wednesday.
Up to 600 monks marched from
their monastery to police headquarters Tuesday to demand the release
of monks detained a day earlier after a protest marking the
anniversary of a 1959 Tibetan uprising that was crushed by China, it
said.
Some of the marchers on Tuesday
shouted slogans such as “Free our people” and “We want an
independent Tibet,” the US-funded broadcaster said, quoting
witnesses.
On arrival at police
headquarters, they were confronted by “a couple of thousand”
armed police officers, who fired tear gas to break up the gathering,
it said.
The report did not mention
whether any monks were detained in the confrontation.
An officer with the
government’s Public Security Bureau in Lhasa denied knowledge of
any incident when contacted by Agence France-Presse by phone on
Wednesday.
Radio Free Asia initially
reported that up to 300 monks had participated in the protests on
Monday and that as many as 60 were arrested.
A foreign ministry spokesman
later confirmed that local police had quashed the Monday protest and
that some arrests had been made, but did not say how many.
--AFP
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