FED:Freed researcher in emotional reunion with family

AAP General News (Australia)
08-22-1999
FED:Freed researcher in emotional reunion with family

MELBOURNE, Aug 22 AAP - Australian Researcher Gabriel Lafitte returned home to an emotional
family reunion today after being detained in China for a week.

Mr Lafitte, 50, his wife Helen Berran and ten-year-old granddaughter Cecilia sobbed and
clung together after Mr Lafitte emerged from his flight in Melbourne.

Sobbing members of Melbourne's Tibetan community then lined up to wrap fine silk khatag -
scarves of welcome - around his neck, all weeping and hugging him as they did so.

Mr Lafitte and fellow-Tibet specialist, US Linguist Daja Meston, 29, were detained a week
ago in the remote North Western province of Quinghai, bordering Tibet.

China alleged they were conducting illegal investigations into a World Rank project to
relocate 60,000 Chinese to the area.

Today Mr Lafitte told reporters he may be the only one of the three man team to emerge
alive from the trip.

Mr Meston lay paralysed and extremely ill in a Chinese hospital after apparently leaping
from the hotel in which they were being detained in an attempt to escape detention.

"I can understand why," Mr Lafitte said.

His friend would also have faced 'this calculating, systematic process of mental cruelty'.

Their guide and translator Tsering Dorje had not been seen since they were detained in
their hotel in the small town of Xiang Ride, close to the project site.

"It may be that I am the only survivor of a group of three."

They had innocently taken the word of the Chinese Government that foreigners were free to
visit the project area," Mr Lafitte said.

Mr Lafitte who looked tired and drawn said he was physically well treated.

After being driven for 28 hours through the provincial capital of Qinghai, he had been
detained in the luxury suite of a hotel.

However, he described the 'extreme mental cruelty' of his interrogators and said he had
confessed repeatedly to being an illegal visitor and doing illegal interviews - an effort to
hasten his release.

"The Chinese are much too smart to use force against a Westerner," he said.

Mr Lafitte held up a tissue covered with red fingerprints, he said they were made with the
red wax he was required to use to sign his confession with a fingerprint.

"They thought I was a spy, the biggest accusation against me was that I behaved like a
journalist," he said.

AAP sg/jh/arb

KEYWORD: CHINA DETAIN LAFITTE

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