Beijing - Tibetans are continuing small protests and a farming boycott in a closed area of south-western China known for its unrest and ethnic division, according to reports seen on Friday.

Police detained four Buddhist nuns and two other Tibetans in Sichuan province's Kardze (Ganzi) prefecture on Wednesday after they shouted slogans supporting the exiled Dalai Lama and calling for greater freedom, the pro-Tibetan independence website phayul. com reported.

The six protestors also demanded the release of Tibetans arrested after earlier demonstrations in Kardze's Rongbatsu township, an Indian-based Tibetan monk with contacts in Rongbatsu told the website.

The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) said 14 Tibetans were injured on 27 March when police arrested a group of farmers who defied government orders to resume agricultural work in another area of Kardze.

The violence came amid a "grim and volatile" atmosphere in Kardze's Drango (Luhuo) county following the alleged beating to death of a monk earlier last week, TCHRD said.

US-funded Radio Free Asia reported that Phuntsok Rabten, 27, a monk from the Drango monastery, died as he was trying to escape from police.

TCHRD is based in the Indian hill town of Dharamshala, which is home to the Tibetan government-in-exile and the Dalai Lama.

An official from the Karzde prefecture government refused to comment on the reports of protests and unrest, but denied that Tibetans were continuing to boycott farming.

"The stories of boycotting farming are totally rumours by the Dalai (Lama) clique," the Kardze official, who declined to give his name, told the German Press Agency dpa by telephone.

Matt Whitticase of the London-based Free Tibet Campaign said Kardze was "probably the most inflamed of any Tibetan area" of China.

"It's an area that's been particularly restive," Whitticase told dpa.

A spokeswoman for the Kardze foreign affairs office, who gave only her surname, Zhang, told dpa that the prefecture remained closed to foreign journalists.

"It's because the traffic situation is not good," she said of the ban on journalists.

The Chinese government's Xinhua news agency last week said Kardze officials had visited Tibetan farming villages after a boycott began in early March.

The local government posted open letters "trying to persuade the peasants back to farming" following calls for a boycott in support of the Dalai Lama's return to China, the agency said.

Radio Free Asia quoted sources as saying the Kardze officials, accompanied by police and soldiers, "forced Tibetan farmers into their fields" and threatened to confiscate the land of some farmers who joined the boycott.

The farming boycott came amid weeks of small protests and civil disobedience in Tibetan areas of China, which began with calls to boycott celebrations of the Tibetan lunar new year in late February.

Paramilitary police sealed off most Tibetan areas in late February before the anniversary of widespread rioting in mid-March last year around the 49th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. (dpa)