By Phurbu Thinley
Dharamsala, March 27: While welcoming Chinese authorities’ decision allowing a select group of foreign journalists into Tibet’s capital Lhasa, Tibetan Government-in-Exile today urged China to give full freedom to them to report on the ongoing crisis in Tibet.
“We welcome the decision by the Chinese authorities to allow a select group of foreign reporters to visit,” Mrs. Kesang Y. Takla, Minister for the Department of Information & International Relations of the Central Tibetan Administration, said in a statement published on its official website today.
Mrs Takla, at the same time, said those reporters must be given “full freedom to report on the ongoing crisis in Tibet”.
“The reporters must be given freedom to visit all the monasteries and prisons in Lhasa and elsewhere in Tibet and interview Tibetans without the presence of Chinese minders,” she said.
Chinese authorities on Wednesday allowed the first group of foreign reporters on a three-day government-controlled visit to Lhasa after foreign journalists and tourists were expelled from Tibet at the height of the unrest.
Authorities have since then sealed off Tibet from foreign reporters and tourists, making it extremely difficult to verify information and forcing foreign media to rely only on information released through the heavily censored state-run media channels.
Authorities have also stopped foreign press and tourists from travelling to Tibetan areas in Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces where fierce protests have broken out lately.
Wednesday’s surprise decision comes at a time when China is already reeling under intense international pressure to end repressive measures in Tibet and amid growing threats of possible boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
In today’s statement, the Central Tibetan Administration based in Daharmsala, India, reiterated its call on the international community to persuade the Chinese government to end the repressions in Tibet and to accept an international body to look into the present crisis in Tibet and also to verify China’s allegation that His Holiness the Dalai Lama is behind the ongoing unrest.
The Tibetan Government also repeated its appeal to accept receiving an international medical team to look after all those Tibetans injured in the recent demonstrations and to release all political prisoners, including those recently arrested.
The official statement also said foreign reporters “should ask the Chinese authorities what their response is to these requests”.
