13 August 2008
Tibetan monks confined during Games
(AFP; RFA) Authorities in Tibetan areas have placed a curfew on Tibetan Buddhist monasteries during the Olympics, forbidding Tibetans from travelling to Beijing and confining some monks around the clock, Radio Free Asia (RFA) sources say. "Since the beginning of August, many monks have been confined to their monasteries day and night", a spokesman for the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) in Dharamsala said. He also said monks at Drepung monastery in Lhasa, had been cut off from contact with the outside world. Monks near the Kumbum monastery in Xining told Agence France-Presse that the railway station had refused to sell them tickets and e-mail services to the monastery have also been discontinued until after the Olympics.