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.”