For offenses as minor as printing a Tibetan flag, sending a text message about rioting or holding a photograph of the Dalai Lama, large numbers of Tibetans were badly beaten and tortured, and in some cases killed, by Chinese security forces in 2008, a human rights group reported Thursday.
In the most comprehensive report yet on the crackdown on Tibetans during and after March 2008 protests, the most serious in decades, New York-based Human Rights Watch interviewed 203 people described as Tibetan eyewitnesses.
“The scale of human rights violations related to suppressing the protests was far greater than previously believed,” the report states. “Chinese forces broke international law — including prohibitions against disproportionate use of force, torture and arbitrary detention.”