China Frees Australian Studying Rural Project

An Australian researcher detained in the remote Chinese province of Qinghai has been released, an Australian Embassy spokesman said Saturday.

Scholar Gabriel Lafitte and Daja Mizu Meston, a Tibetan linguist from the United States, were detained in Qinghai while conducting research in an area targeted for a controversial World Bank aid project.

After protests by the Australian government, Lafitte, 50, was released and on his way back home, the spokesman said on condition of anonymity.

Earlier Saturday, Lafitte’s wife, Helen Verran, complained that the Australian government was doing nothing to help her husband, accusing officials of being “timid, spineless, obsequious yes-men.”

U.S. officials in Beijing declined to release details on Meston, 29, saying he had not yet signed a privacy waiver. He was severely injured last week when he jumped from a building while trying to escape police, China’s Foreign Ministry said.

The government said it detained Meston and Lafitte for “illegal covering and photographing.”

The pair were conducting interviews in Dulan County, an area slated for an irrigation and resettlement project.

The State Department said they were believed to be preparing an independent study of the project’s impact.

Chinese authorities enforce strict controls on reporting and research, particularly in sensitive and remote areas.

Dulan, a sparsely inhabited county populated for centuries by Mongolian and Tibetan herders, is at the center of a controversial plan to move 58,000 poor Chinese farmers from arid, over-farmed land elsewhere in Qinghai. The World Bank approved a $40-million loan in June to help build a dam to irrigate Dulan’s fields.

The U.S. government, the Dalai Lama, Tibetan exile groups and environmental and human rights activists opposed the project.

Tibet lobbying groups say it would reignite old ethnic hostilities.

They also say it would aid alleged Chinese government plans to anchor independence-minded Tibetan regions with Chinese settlers.