August 21, 1999	atimes.com

China Tibet project researchers detained By Abid Aslam WASHINGTON - Chinese authorities have detained an American and an Australian researcher in northwest China, reportedly for investigating a proposed World Bank project in a Tibetan and Mongolian autonomous area. Daja Meston, 29, of the United States and Gabriel Lafitte, 50, of Australia were taken into custody August 15 in Dulan County, site of the controversial project, according to Human Rights Watch. The watchdog group called on the bank Thursday to ''intervene at the highest levels with officials in Beijing to help secure the release'' of the two men. ''While these two men are held incommunicado, they face increasing risk of torture or ill-treatment,'' said Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington-based director of the rights watchdog's Asia Division. So far, neither the Australian nor US governments had been able to obtain consular access to the detainees, he noted. World Bank President James Wolfensohn had been alerted but for the time being the bank was ''still trying to find out the full facts, including why these people were there and what exactly has transpired'', said agency spokesman Peter Stephens. No official confirmation or explanation of the detentions came from Beijing and US officials were unavailable for comment. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who were in contact with US and Australian consular officials said the pair were being held for asking questions about the proposed bank project - an activity deemed inconsistent with their tourist visas. Lafitte is a University of Melbourne researcher and Meston, a translator on leave from a private group arranging exchange programs for English teachers. The two met at a Tibetan development conference in the United States earlier this year and made plans to visit Dulan County. They arrived in the remote region earlier this month and began interviewing officials and local residents about government and World Bank plans to resettle some 60,000 poor peasants from severely eroded hillsides to the arid plains which occupy about one-tenth of the Tibetan plateau. According to the World Bank, the region is ''adjacent'' to Tibet proper, which China annexed in 1959. Sponsors of the bank project said the transmigration plan will fight poverty, but Tibet support groups saw it as part of an alleged government campaign to undermine Tibetan culture by tipping the demographic scales against the indigenous population. Environmentalists also have accused the bank of skirting environmental rules and flirting with disaster in an ecologically fragile area. ''They didn't hide their intentions from anyone,'' John Ackerly, president of the US-based International Committee for Tibet, said of the two travelers. Before embarking on the trip, Lafitte met World Bank officials and they encouraged him to visit the area, Ackerly added. ''We were encouraging anybody to apply to the Chinese government for permission to visit the site,'' said Stephens, who confirmed Ackerly's account. ''We do believe that there should be open access to this site and the Chinese have said as much,'' Stephens added. ''It's up to the Chinese government to grant that access. We don't issue visas.'' The World Bank's executive board voted in late June to freeze the Dulan County resettlement plan pending an official investigation of NGO complaints against the scheme, but gave a go-ahead for other components of the $160-million ''China Western Poverty Reduction Project''. At the June vote, Zhu Xian, Chinese representative on the 24-member board, said the government in Beijing welcomed scrutiny of the project. Authorities have since led journalists and other foreign observers on official tours of the project site and NGOs also would be granted access, officials said, as long as the groups were not deemed pro-Tibetan or anti-Chinese. Lafitte was affiliated with an Australian Tibet support group and was widely regarded not as an activist but as a scholar, specializing in development issues of grasslands communities. He had previously visited China and Tibet without incident, according to colleagues and acquaintances. Meston was born in Nepal to parents who were US citizens and he was raised in a Tibetan monastery, according to Ackerly. Although Meston and his wife, a Tibetan exile, were thought to oppose China's annexing of Tibet, he was not believed to have any political affiliations, had worked widely as a translator, and also visited China before. ''They've both spent time there and were very comfortable working within the boundaries [of conduct] laid down by the Chinese,'' Ackerly said of the two. ''They were not there to confront anybody or raise any political or human rights issues. They were just interested in looking at World Bank issues.'' Those issues - whether the bank fudged its environmental assessments, hid their findings from the public, and failed to assemble satisfactory plans to protect communities and ecosystems affected by the project - will be the subject of a probe by the bank's independent Inspection Panel. Executive directors, at their June meeting on the project, requested the investigation of NGO complaints against the bank. In turn, bank management sought to quash the probe, arguing that complaints had been filed by foreign groups, not those based in the project area itself. Board members countered that if the complaints were deemed not eligible on those grounds, then executive directors themselves would sponsor an investigation. But as a matter of procedure - characterized by one insider as ''nonsensical'' - the directors will have to decide next month whether the probe can proceed or whether they must, in effect, add their own names to the list of plaintiffs. (Inter Press Service)

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