Gabriel Lafitte

Gabriel Lafitte is a development policy consultant to the Environment & Development Desk of the Tibetan government in exile based in India. In 1999 he was asked by Tibetans to assess a World Bank project in Tibetan areas of Qinghai province that proposed alleviating poverty by sending tens of thousands of non Tibetans settlers to displace Tibetan nomads. While at the World Bank site he was detained and interrogated by China’s state security force for a week, then deported. He recently returned to China to present a plan to a state-sponsored conference on poverty, for improving Tibetan livelihoods by interbreeding Australian carpet wool sheep. Gabriel contributed to two reports just published, which explain the roots of Tibetan discontent: www.tibet.net/en/diir/pubs/edi/tib2007/content.html and www.savetibet.org/documents/document.php?id=245.