09 August 2006
Violence at Lithang horse festival
Radio Free Asia’s (RFA) Tibetan service reports that a crowd of Tibetan nomads ransacked a local police station in Lithang (Chin: Litang), Sichuan province, after a dispute over the result of a race at the famous annual horse race festival in early August. According to a local source quoted by RFA: "[the] third place was actually won by a local nomadic horse racer, but the authorities declared a horse owned by a government official as third-place winner”. The Tibetan nomads were enraged, and the father of the Tibetan horseman who they believed was the rightful winner went to complain at the Lithang police station, where he was beaten by police, sources said. Several hundred Tibetan nomads then ransacked the police station. Lithang police, contacted by telephone by RFA, declined to comment on the incident.