Two French women were detained and strip-searched by Chinese police in

Lhasa last month because they were believed to be carrying letters from

Tibetans. The two women and a Danish man were confined to their hotels

for up to six days before being made to sign confessions and told to

leave the country.

One of the women, a student from Paris, Francoise Robin, was stopped by

police at Lhasa airport on 29th April as she was about to board the

twice-weekly plane to Nepal. In the first reported case of this kind, she

was strip-searched by women police, who seized two letters which friends

had given to her to take to Nepal.

Searches of foreigners in Tibet are rare, except where an offence has

already been seen to have been committed, and strip searches are almost

unheard of. The case of Mis Robin indicates a shift in police strategy

towards increased surveillance and searches of targetted foreigners in

Tibet.

Ms. Robin, who says she has no involvement with any organisation or any

political activity connected to Tibet, had just completed 8 months on a

Tibetan language course at the University of Lhasa. Police appear to have

selected her for surveillance because she was one of the few foreign

residents of Lhasa who can speak Tibetan. An informed Tibetan source told TIN

that police had been watching Ms. Robin for some time.

Ms Robin, who studied Tibetan language at the Institut National des Langues

et Civilisations Orientales in Paris, had been given one of the letters by a

French tourist earlier the same morning to post in Nepal. The other letter

had been given to her by a Tibetan friend a few days earlier. Police seemed

to know that she was carrying the letters, as well as the identity of the

Tibetan friend, according to Ms Robin. The police team carried out only a

cursory check of her luggage, apparently expecting the letters to be carried

on her person, said the student.

The letter from Ms Robin's Tibetan friend, a nun, included news about a

recent demonstration inside Tibet. If identified, the nun risks serious

punishment for "leaking state secrets", an offence equivalent to espionage in

Chinese law.

Ms Robin was taken from the airport to a police station for four hours and

then to the Tibet Guesthouse, a state-owned hotel where she was confined to

the premises for three days and made to sign a document accepting

"residential surveillance", a form of quasi-voluntary house arrest, under

Article 38 of the Chinese Criminal Procedure Code, before being expelled to

Nepal.

- Confession Filmed -

Two weeks later, on 13th May, the French tourist who had given Ms Robin one

of the letters was detained with a travelling companion after returning to

Lhasa from a countryside tour. "In the morning 10 uniformed police came to

our room in the Banakshol Hotel and searched through all our belongings,"

said the tourist, Raphaele Demandre. "We then spent 11 hours answering

questions".

Ms Demandre, a 41 year old artist from Paris, was also strip-searched and,

after six days of intermittent questioning, was told to leave the country,

together with a Danish man, a 39 year old student of Buddhism from

Copenhagen, who was travelling with her.

Both women said that the initial detention and searches as well as part of

their interrogations were videoed by a police camera-man. Ms Robin was also

filmed signing one of several confessions she had to write. "They filmed me

presenting the papers to the camera and I was asked to say to the camera who

had given me the letters, and to say that I would not violate Chinese law

again," said Ms Robin. Both women were also made to sign and put their

fingerprints on Chinese-language summaries of all their police interviews.

The two women said that they did not know what Chinese law they had violated,

and that they were not told what legal offence they had committed by carrying

the letters. "I think they said that the contents were "internal affairs","

said Ms Robin. "I said I didn't know I could not give a letter to a friend to

post, and they were saying that I was trying to send news to the outside,"

said Ms Demandre, who was told that she had "interfered in internal affairs",

which is not an offence in Chinese law.

One of the letters included the names of some Tibetans who had been arrested

in a recent demonstration, and was the focus of Chinese interest. Information

about prisoners is regarded as a state secret by the Chinese authorities, and

a Tibetan doctor is currently serving a 13 year jail sentence in Lhasa for

sending a letter to India in 1989 containing prisoners' names. A tour guide,

Gendun Rinchen, was imprisoned for 8 months after being found with a similar

letter addressed to visiting European diplomats in 1993.

Police questioning of the two French women focussed on who had written the

letters, and on whom they were addressed to. The police were all Tibetans

except for the most senior officer, an ethnic Chinese official who told Ms

Robin she would not be allowed to leave that week unless she said whom the

letters were for. She was also repeatedly asked to describe the friends who

had given her the letters.

Police confiscated slide films from both women, listened to audio cassettes

found in their luggage and even stayed with the women when they went to the

toilet. Both women said that they were well treated by the police, although

Ms Robin was repeatedly prevented from contacting her embassy in Beijing, an

issue that is believed to have led to subsequent complaints from the French

authorities. Ms Demandre appears to have benefitted from enquiries made in

Beijing on her behalf by senior French diplomats and was well treated, being

allowed to leave her hotel in the day-time during her six days detention.