Chinese authorities in Tibet have detained more than 50 people attempting to flee across the border in recent weeks as they crack down on refugees seeking religious and political freedom, Radio Free Asia reported Wednesday.
The detentions appear to have been sparked by a September 30 incident in which Chinese authorities fired on a band of refugees that included children as they tried to cross the rugged border with Nepal, it said.
A teenage Buddhist nun was shot dead in the incident, which was filmed by a Romanian television crew and drew international condemnation. Another refugee from that group later died in Chinese custody, according to rights groups.
Fifty-three asylum-seekers have been detained in the subsequent clampdown, the non-profit radio service reported, quoting unnamed Tibetan sources.
They said many Tibetans from the Amdo and Kham regions, who account for a large portion of the India-bound refugees in Lhasa, were leaving the region’s capital to escape the widening net.
Three other people have been detained in Lhasa for allegedly acting as escorts for asylum seekers, the sources said.
Two are Tibetans and the other is an ethnic Nepalese, the radio service said.
Such escorts arrange passage for refugees at a price of about 1,000 2,000 yuan (US$125-US$250) per child, it added.
Chinese security authorities in the remote Himalayan region reached by AFP on Wednesday declined to comment.
More than 2,500 Tibetan refugees make the arduous journey through icy mountain passes into Nepal and on to India every year, more than half of them children, human rights workers say.
