Tibetan monk beaten to death in China

Radio Free Asia said Phuntsok Rabten, a 27-year-old monk from Draggo monastery in the predominantly Tibetan Ganzi prefecture of Sichuan province, died last Wednesday after trying to escape police by motorcycle and on foot.

There was no way of independently verifying the report, which cited a former area resident now living in India. Calls to local police at the county and township levels rang unanswered while a man who answered the phone at the county's Communist Party branch would not comment.

A monk who answered the phone at the Draggo monastery said that a monk there died last Friday, adding he did not know how. But subsequent calls to the same number were answered by others who said it was not the monastery.