China Frees U.S. Researcher Hurt in Fall

An American researcher seriously injured after he fell from a third-floor window while in detention was flown to Hong Kong for medical treatment Thursday, 11 days after police seized him near the site of a proposed World Bank project in western China.

Daja Mizu Meston, 29, of Newton, Mass., was taken from an intensive-care unit at a hospital in Xining, capital of Qinghai province, and put on a chartered plane to Hong Kong, U.S. Embassy officials said.

He was evacuated from China after meeting Chinese demands that he “confess” wrongdoing and apologize to local authorities, State Department spokesman James Foley said. He was also told to stay out of China for five years.

Meston, along with an Australian researcher and a Chinese citizen hired as a translator, was detained on Aug. 15 in the small town of Xiangride.

Meston suffered serious spinal injuries, broken bones and other internal injuries when he fell from a third-floor window of a hotel in Xining where he was being held. The circumstances of Meston’s fall have not been disclosed.

His Australian colleague, Gabriel Lafitte, said police interrogated him repeatedly, depriving him of sleep at times to extract a confession. China’s Foreign Ministry said Meston was trying to escape.

Lafitte was released last weekend. Chinese authorities also have not said whether Tsering Dorje, the Tibetan teacher detained with the researchers, will face punishment.

China wants to use $40 million in low-cost World Bank funding to build a dam and irrigate fields for 57,800 poor farmers who would be moved from eroded and overpopulated mountains in eastern Qinghai.

Meston and Lafitte went to Qinghai to check out suspicions that the dam and resettlement project would affect the local Tibetan culture.