Westerners accuse China of brutality

DAJA MESTON and Gabriel Lafitte had little idea of the trouble in store for them when they bought bus tickets to the site of a proposed World Bank poverty alleviation scheme in north-west China.

But two weeks later, Mr Meston, 29, an American academic, lies in a Chinese hospital with severe injuries suffered when he fell from a three-storey window during detention. Mr Lafitte, 50, his Australian research colleague - who was subjected to sleep deprivation and harsh questioning for a week before his expulsion from China - has now warned that Peking is conducting a witch-hunt over opposition to the World Bank project to settle ethnic Chinese in nomadic lands.

In addition, the pair's Tibetan translator has disappeared without trace and there are concerns for the safety of all those who talked to the academics during their short stay in Dulan county, a remote area on the edge of the Tibetan plateau in Qinghai province.

"It's a political witch-hunt. We were in the hands of the elite state security police and they wanted to prove that we were part of a global conspiracy to weaken and split up China," said Mr Lafitte, who specialises in studying the long-term viability of nomadic communities and their ecosystems.

"I understand from US diplomats that my colleague [Mr Meston] may be paralysed," Mr Lafitte, who also holds British nationality, said from his home in Australia.

The US Embassy in Peking, which has been attempting to evacuate Mr Meston from the provincial capital of Xining, where he is in intensive care, said he had suffered broken bones and spinal and internal injuries. A spokeswoman said Mr Meston's injuries were consistent with a fall from a third-storey window.

China's state police maintain Mr Meston jumped or fell from the window while trying to escape. He is still under police detention.

Mr Meston, Mr Lafitte and their Tibetan translator, Tsering Dorje, travelled to Dulan to investigate the area where the World Bank proposed settling 58,000 impoverished Chinese as part of a wider poverty alleviation scheme.

While the World Bank and China maintain the $40m (pounds 26m) project will help the region, critics - who include the United States and Germany - warn that the ethnic Chinese settlers will destroy the sensitive ecosystem and force out ethnic Tibetan and Mongolian herders.

China secured a provisional go-ahead for the scheme by agreeing that an inspection panel reviewed the proposal and "interested parties" could have unfettered access to the project.

Mr Lafitte claims that China has broken its word over free access to the area. But Peking asserts that he and Mr Meston were not invited by Chinese or World Bank officials and were involved in "illegal covering and photographing" in a restricted zone.

China's central authorities have encouraged ethnic Chinese settlers to move to Tibet and border regions such as Qinghai in an attempt to dilute Tibetan separatism.