A report issued by an American lawyers’ group disclosed that Tibetan children as young as six are being detained and tortured for political and religious offenses by Chinese authorities. The California-based International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet quoted refugee children’s accounts of beatings and electric shocks given to children imprisoned for offenses ranging from writing the word “independence” in a school notebook to posting pictures of Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

China was accused in February of tightening birth control measures in Tibet only days after Beijing said Tibetans could have as many children as they want. The London-based Tibet Information Network said it had heard some Tibetan women were instructed to have only two children or face compulsory sterilization. A 30-year-old unnamed Tibetan man told the network that “in 1998, about two thirds of the women from approximately 300 households” in his township had been sterilized.

Tibet has also suffered because of China’s influence within international institutions. A World Bank enquiry made public by the New York Times newspaper found that the institution had violated its rules by approving a Chinese anti-poverty plan that would have involved relocating 58,000 farmers on the edge of Tibet. Environmental and human rights groups last year contended that the bank was aiding China’s efforts to dilute the minority Tibetan population. Tibetan exile groups have said the plan is tantamount to “cultural genocide.” Under the bank plan $40 million would be spent to re-locate some of China’s poorest families to more fertile land outside Tibet’s boundaries. A result would be to put ethnic Han Chinese farmers into Qinghai, territory that Tibetans consider part of their homeland.