American Hurt in Escape Bid, China Says

An American researcher detained in China was severely injured when he jumped from a building while trying to escape police, China’s Foreign Ministry said Friday.

China identified the man as Daja Mizu Meston, a 29-year-old Tibetan linguist from Newton, Mass.

Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said in a statement carried by state media that Meston “is out of danger after emergency treatment.” Meston jumped from the building Wednesday.

Meston and Australian scholar Gabriel Lafitte are being held in Qinghai province, a remote area of the Tibetan plateau, apparently for investigating a controversial poverty-relief project. China says it detained them for “illegal covering and photographing.”

Chinese officials meanwhile said Lafitte had “confessed, apologized and repented,” according to a diplomatic cable from the Australian Embassy in Beijing.

The pair had been conducting interviews in Dulan County, which is targeted to receive a $40-million loan from the World Bank, officials said. The U.S. State Department said they were believed to have been preparing an independent study of the project’s impact.

Those opposed to the project, which would move 58,000 poor Chinese farmers into the region, say it would reignite ethnic hostilities and aid alleged Chinese government plans to anchor independence-minded Tibetan regions with Chinese settlers.