Nepali police beat pro-Tibet protesters and detain 125

NEPAL: Nepali police beat up pro-Tibet protesters in Kathmandu yesterday and detained at least 125 people as demonstrators tried…

NEPAL:Nepali police beat up pro-Tibet protesters in Kathmandu yesterday and detained at least 125 people as demonstrators tried to storm the Chinese embassy demanding freedom for their Himalayan homeland.

The protesters were dragged into waiting police vehicles before being driven away to detention centres.

"China thief leave the country," the protesters, some of them monks, shouted in Nepali. "Stop killing in Tibet . . . free Tibet," they demanded.

Exiled Tibetans have been protesting regularly since riots broke out in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, in March, followed by demonstrations in other Tibetan areas of China.

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More than 20,000 Tibetans have been living in Nepal since fleeing after the failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

Nepal regards Tibet as part of China, which provides considerable financial assistance for its economic development.

Meanwhile, envoys of the Dalai Lama and Chinese officials agreed to further contact during a day of talks in Shenzhen.

The closed-door meeting on Sunday, in the southern city near Hong Kong, was the first since the March unrest in Lhasa.

"They [the envoys] have completed their discussion," Thubten Samphel, secretary of the department of information of the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India, told Reuters.

"Prof Samdhong Rinpoche described the dialogue as going very well," he said, referring to the prime minister of the self-proclaimed government-in-exile.

The Tibetan riots and protests, which China blames on the Dalai Lama, were the most serious challenge to Chinese rule in the mountainous region for almost two decades. They prompted anti-China protests that have disrupted the international leg of the Olympic torch relay and led to calls to boycott August's Beijing games, triggering counterprotests by Chinese fiercely proud of holding the games.

"Chinese central government officials and the private representatives of the 14th Dalai Lama agreed to hold another round of contact at an appropriate time," China's official Xinhua news agency said.

China proposed the talks last month after western governments urged it to reopen dialogue with the Dalai Lama, who says he wants a high level of autonomy, not independence, for his predominantly Buddhist Himalayan homeland. - (Reuters)