Free Tibet protest thwarted by police

By Tony Wall and Mathew Dearnaley

In his native Tibet, Thuten Kesang could be thrown into jail by Chinese authorities merely for displaying his beloved Tibetan flag.

So the former Lhasa man felt as though a little piece of communist China had come to leafy Epsom on Saturday, when a squad of ready-response police cracked down on his small group of protesters near Government House.

Mr Kesang's Friends of Tibet and Students for a Free Tibet (New Zealand) are outraged by their treatment at the hands of police before the summit between US President Bill Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

They say police pandered to the Chinese by pushing them out of sight of Mr Jiang's motorcade and used unnecessary force.

A group of about 40 protesters - waving huge, colourful Tibetan flags - had assembled at the corner of Mountain and Almorah Rds, at least 300m from the entrance to Government House.

They had a permit to be there.

They stood there in orderly manner for more than an hour, but just minutes before Mr Jiang's motorcade arrived, a squad of about 50 police formed a line in front of the group.

A police bus was parked across the road, blocking the protesters' view of the motorcade.

The group was then forced across to the other side of the road, out of sight of the Government House entrance.

Police say they were responding to the protesters' apparent attempt to move forward from their agreed position, and that the bus was parked across the road to form a "demarcation line."

A police spokesman said the extra show of security was also in response to the arrival of two busloads of protesters from the Falun Dafa group - the meditation-cum-exercise organisation being harassed by authorities in China.

But the Tibet protesters allege it was a cynical attempt to keep them out of sight of the Chinese President, who refuses to acknowledge Tibetan protesters wherever he goes in the world.

They say the same thing happened in Australia last week.

One man, Dennis Page, aged 52, said he was assaulted by an officer who pushed him hard in the chest.

Mr Kesang, who has lived in New Zealand since 1967 and whose life ambition is to send the Dalai Lama back to a free Tibet, said the police actions were "shameful."

"I have never seen such nonsense ... These instructions came from the Chinese Government, not the New Zealand Government ... This is supposed to be a democracy," he said.

Mr Kesang said he hoped Apec leaders would place the Tibetan issue on the agenda, forcing Mr Jiang to discuss the issue of Tibetan independence.

Tibetan protesters later claimed some success in getting themselves seen outside the Sheraton Hotel, where the President is staying, and at the Ellerslie Convention Centre, where he attended a dinner on Saturday night.

Democracy activists are meanwhile shocked that three local Chinese journalists were detained at the airport police station during President Jiang's arrival on Saturday.

A visiting founder of the banned Chinese Democracy Party, Dr Wang Bingzhang, said the trio were held for an hour and a half, had their Apec media passes confiscated and were issued with trespass notices.

These prohibited them from returning to the airport for seven days, under pain of stiff fines or imprisonment, he said.

Dr Wang, who lives in exile in New York, said the three journalists from the Auckland-based Chinese language New Times newspaper were detained after Chinese secret agents pointed them out to the police.