Tibet Information Network - 6 August, 1995

A US tourist was detained and searched at Lhasa airport by police looking for letters from Tibetans, the second such incident reported in two months. Police confiscated six letters in Tibetan, 30 rolls of film, and 8 audio cassettes from the tourist, as well as her dairy and a guide book.

The Tibetans who wrote the letters or who were featured in the photographs are almost certain to have been detained and interrogated, according to well-informed sources in Tibet.

The incident, which took place on 4th July, as the tourist was boarding a Nepal-bound plane after a month holiday in Tibet, seems to have been carefully planned. When the tourist arrived at the airport she was met by two camera crews who filmed her before and during the search, as well as by a team of police officers who questioned her and searched the luggage.

The tourist, a 41 year old woman who has asked not to be named, is a travel consultant from the mid-west of the United States. Although in previous cases westerners have been held for up to 6 days for questioning, the process was streamlined, and the tourist was allowed to leave for Nepal within an hour once the letters had been discovered and she had signed a confession.

The airport detention indicates an increasingly sophisticated and assertive security apparatus in Tibet well capable of identifying which western travellers have contacts with Tibetans, and which are therefore likely to be carrying letters when they leave.

Unlike a French student who was detained and strip searched at Lhasa airport two months ago, the American tourist did not speak any Tibetan. But, unusually, the woman had spent a month travelling around Tibet with a Tibetan family, whose relatives live in America and are close friends of the tourist. Most foreigners in Tibet hardly come into contact with locals other than tour guides and hotel and restaurant staff.

The tourist says she first noticed that she and her friends were being filmed when she was saying goodbye to her Tibetan friends at the airport.

"When I checked my baggage in there was a TV crew filming, and they were also filming when I was standing in line to show my airplane ticket," said the tourist. "At the time I thought they were other passengers waiting for the plane."

After her Tibetan friends had left, she was detained at the final check- in before boarding the plane, and escorted to a room within the air terminal where three more people, apparently officials, were waiting, each with a video camera, as well as two stills photographers and about 8 other people, some in police uniform, one of whom spoke English. "They were definitely waiting for me", she said.

Officials searched the baggage, confiscating all six letters written by Tibetans as well as eight audio cassettes, two of which were spoken messages from Tibetans to their relatives in the US. The others were blank or contained music, said the tourist. They also impounded a tourist guidebook to Tibet published in the "Lonely Planet" series.

"I had a lot of private correspondence which I was supposed to deliver, five letters in total, all in Tibetan, from relatives, spouses, mothers and grandfathers of Tibetans who now live in the US. The police seemed excited to find them and they filmed each of these letters and then put everything in a pile and took pictures of the pile," explained the tourist, who said that police also read through her dairy before confiscating it.

"I also had a photograph album with pictures of a Tibetan friend of mine in the States, and they took that too," she said. Police took some 16 used rolls of film and about 20 other rolls which had not been used as well.

"I had taken photographs of all the Tibetans that I had spent time with, tourist photos of my Tibetan friends, mainly standing in front of Mount Kailash", she added. As in previous cases officials indicated that they might later return the films via the US Embassy in Beijing, but have so far not done so.

All the letters were private correspondence from the Tibetans, except for one, sent by a political prisoner, which included the official court papers concerning the prisoner's case. Sources in Lhasa say that the Tibetans who wrote the letters will be released from prison with a strict warning after a few days, but expect the prisoner to face severe consequences as a result of his letter. In 1991 Yeshe Ngawang, a 28 year old monk in Lhasa's Drapchi prison, received an additional 9 year sentence after he was caught passing a letter about prison conditions to one of his relatives.

The US tourist said officials showed most interest in the court document included in the prisoner's letter, and asked who had given the letter to her. "I said someone handed it to me in the restaurant, and they asked what they looked like," she said. The Chinese authorities are believed to classify such documents as state secrets.

After the baggage had been searched three women took her to another room and searched her down to her underwear apparently in the hope of finding hidden letters. The tourist said that she was told by officials that she had "done something very wrong" and was instructed to write out the statement "I have broken my tourist visa law by carrying out an official Chinese document". She was then filmed signing the statement as well as four or five copies of another document in Chinese. The tourist was allowed to rejoin her flight to Kathmandu, and was filmed boarding the plane.

Police were polite throughout the search, and returned $25 that they found enclosed with one of the Tibetan envelopes. "What has happened to me has already happened. I am only concerned about the safety of my friends," the tourist said.