58. Tibetans storm into Chinese embassy in Delhi

New Delhi, Dec 6 (AP)

A group of Tibetan activists on Tuesday forced their way into the Chinese embassy compound in New Delhi to protest China's crackdown on followers of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama in Tibet. Police and embassy security staff dragged out the protesters who for a brief while shouted slogans and waved banners inside the high security embassy complex, footage from AP Television News showed. Other Tibetan Youth Congress activists chained the mselves to a fence surrounding the embassy and police had to use wire cutters to remove them. Witnesses speaking to AP Television News said around 30 activists were shouting slogans outside the embassy, when eight of them climbed over a side gate and entered the compound taking security guards by surprise. They unfurled a yellow banner which said "Stop patriotic re-education in monasteries in Tibet," a reference to the recent crackdown on monks in Tibet's largest monastery by Chinese authorities. The activists shouted "Free Tibet" and "Stop the Killings in Tibet," as policemen hustled them into police vans. They were released without charge a few hours later, a police spokesman said. Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, a Tibetan human rights group, said last week that Chinese authorities have sealed off the Drepung monastery on the outskirts of Tibet's capital, Lhasa, and detained five of its monks in a widening crackdown on followers o f the exiled Dalai Lama. The Tibetan group said the detained monks had refused to sign a document denouncing the Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 during an uprising against Chinese rule. The Government has allowed the Dalai Lama, along with some 1,20,000 of his followers, to settle in the northern mountain town of Dharamsala and set up a government in exile there.