THOUSANDS of angry Tibetans staged anti-China protests in India and Nepal, with hundreds detained by baton-wielding police hours before the Olympic Games opening ceremony was due to take place in Beijing.
In one of the biggest rallies, nearly 4,000 Tibetans, including maroon-robed nuns and monks, took to the streets in New Delhi, saying China had no right to host the Games.
Police with raised batons charged a demonstration of about 2,000 Tibetans a
nd Nepali supporters who marched in the Nepali capital of Katmandu. Yesterday they detained 513 of the protesters, including 337 men and 176 women.
The demonstrators had been staging a peaceful sit-in protest since the early hours, but later refused to disperse, prompting police to charge and beat them with bamboo sticks, witnesses said.
Tenzin Yangdon, a Tibetan Youth Congress leader, yelled at the rally in New Delhi: "China has failed to live up to the ideals of the Olympics, the International Olympic Committee has failed to protect the Olympics from China.
"It is also a failure for the world, how could they allow China to stage the Olympics, symbolising equality among mankind?" he said, after traffic came to a halt as protesters marched through the heart of India's capital, shouting: "Stop lying in Tibet" and "Games over, free Tibet".
Many of the demonstrators waved the Tibetan flag and yellow Free Tibet caps as they walked past hundreds of policemen guarding the streets.
India has been a centre of regular Tibetan protests for months, with exiles even scaling the walls of the Chinese embassy in New Delhi twice since last August.
Yesterday, policemen with automatic weapons stood guard outside the embassy, which was surrounded by barbed-wire fences and barricades to stop anyone entering.
The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader who lives in exile in India, supports the Olympics taking place in Beijing and was not seen during a separate rally in Dharamsala, the headquarters of the Tibetan government-in-exile in northern India, where at least 1,500 Tibetan monks and nuns marched in protest.
But thousands of young Tibetans born in India disagree.
Nangayal Soepa, a Tibetan protester, said in New Delhi: "Chinese people may deserve the Games, but not when their authorities are orchestrating violence inside Tibet."
The Tibetans have promised to carry on their protests even after the Games. Karma, a 54-year-old nun, holding a yellow-and-white Buddhist flag in Katmandu, said: "Many Tibetans, including monks and nuns, are tortured and imprisoned. We are protesting for their release and appealing to the international community to help to release these religious people."
