From: Tibet Information Network, TIN News Update / 29 April, 1996/

Monasteries in Tibet have been forbidden to display photographs of the exiled Dalai Lama and police in Lhasa are ordering hotels and restaurants to remove all pictures of the exile leader as part of an escalating campaign by the Chinese authorities to weaken religious support for the Dalai Lama.

Plain-clothes police visited hotels and restaurants in the Tibetan capital on 22nd and 23rd April ordering Tibetans to take down photographs of the leader, who fled from Tibet 37 years ago and now heads an exile government in India.

The ban is the most confrontational step taken so far by the Chinese authorities in a year-long campaign against the personal standing of the Dalai Lama. It reverses a 15 year policy which symbolised the liberalisations of the early 1980s by allowing Tibetans the freedom to show religious respect to their exile leader despite his political views.

A Chinese Embassy official in London refused to comment on the reports, saying it had not received news of such a ban.

The police visits to Lhasa hotels came two weeks after a ban on public display of photographs of the Dalai Lama was announced on the front page of the 5th April edition of Xizang Ribao, the Chinese-language edition of the Tibet Daily, the official Party paper, a copy of which has just reached London. The ban was repeated in the Tibetan-language edition of the paper two days later. "The hanging of the Dalai's portrait in temples should gradually be banned," said the announcement.

The announcement, which cited a previously unknown document called "Circular on Seizing and Confiscating Reactionary Propaganda Materials and Stepping Up Anti-Infiltrative Work in Religious Activities Centres", referred only to religious institutions. It is unclear why police are enforcing the new rules in secular establishments as well as monasteries, or why the ban is not being implemented gradually, as stated in the announcement.

"Usually, the strategy is different: they impose a new regulation in one place and they see the reactions," said one Tibetan in Lhasa. "When it is OK, they extend little by little. Now, it looks as if they do not care about the reactions from inside or outside," added the Tibetan, who asked not to be named. The publication of such a ban in a major newspaper is also unusual and suggests increasing confidence amongst the leadership in the region.

- Dalai Lama "No Longer A Religious Leader" -

The newspaper indicated that the ban is part of an escalating effort to remove the Dalai Lama from his dominant position in Tibetan Buddhism. "The Dalai is no longer a religious leader who can bring happiness to the masses, but a guilty person of the motherland and the people," said the announcement.

The anti-Dalai Lama campaign has previously focussed on his political standing but in the last six weeks has moved to a much more ambitious attack on his spiritual qualifications as well. The Dalai Lama "seems like a political swindler, not the incarnation of Buddha at all", a senior Tibetan aristocrat, Lhalu Tsewang Dorje, was quoted as saying on 6th March, according to the official Chinese news agency. The article made Lhalu the first Tibetan besides politicians to query in public the Dalai Lama's spiritual qualifications. Statements by named individuals are often used in the Chinese press to indicate that an official campaign in a similar vein is likely to follow.

Tourists arriving from Lhasa say all Dalai Lama photographs had been taken down by last week in the Jokhang, the main temple in Lhasa, as well as in the Yak Hotel, the Snowlands Hotel, and various restaurants.

"They came into where we were staying and the staff had to remove all the photos of the Dalai Lama," said one tourist who saw two policemen giving orders. "Local people were saying "they cannot remove him from our heart" and things like that," added the tourist, who asked not to be named.

One picture of the current Dalai Lama is said to be still remaining in the Potala Palace, former home of the Dalai Lama. "The only picture of the Dalai Lama left on display in the Potala is the drawing hanging in the throne room showing him in Chinese clothes," said the tourist, who visited the Palace last week.

They described a similar situation in the Jokhang Temple. "There are Dalai Lama photos still in the office of the Jokhang and in the monks' rooms, but every single small one in front of any statue has gone," he said, adding that in some places the Dalai Lama pictures have been replaced by pictures of the 10th Panchen Lama, a senior religious leader who never fled into exile but who has increasingly been viewed as a covert nationalist since his death in 1989.

In Drepung monastery, one of the major religious institutions near the capital, monks are reported to have been given special permission to delay the removal of the photographs until after the end of a series of religious teachings in a few days time.

Although the newspaper order refers to confiscation of photographs, the police have not impounded the pictures, but have only ordered proprietors to remove them from display. In the Jokhang Temple, the pictures are reported to have been placed in a storeroom and a list compiled by officials. So far monks have not been banned from having pictures in their private quarters, although some sources say this may change in due course.

- Empty Picture Frames on Display -

There are accounts of symbolic resistance in Lhasa to the order, and some street traders in the city are now placing empty picture frames on their stalls alongside photographs of permitted lamas, as a gesture against the new decree, according to one tourist.

In Gyu-me Tantric College in Lhasa monks have removed a famous picture of the Dalai Lama from one of their shrines but have refused to take down other pictures of the exiled leader. "The Gyu-me monks are resisting and there are still three smaller photos left up, and there is going to be trouble there," commented the tourist.

The extent to which the new order has been implemented elsewhere is unclear, and there are so far no reports of the situation in the major monasteries of Sera or Ganden. But the Tibet Daily announcement noted that the order had been relayed in person at a meeting on 4th April to the leaders of the seven main monasteries in the Lhasa area.

The monastic leaders are unlikely to express dissent, as all "non-patriotic" people have been banned from holding official positions in the management committees of monasteries. "Leadership of these committees must be firmly held by patriotic and devoted monks and nuns," declared the same article.

Certain monasteries and temples had received internal instructions earlier this year telling them to remove the offending photographs, but there was no public or region-wide instruction until this month. Monks at the Norbulingka and the Potala, the summer and winter palaces of the Dalai Lamas, were ordered to take down all Dalai Lama photographs on 24th January, according to a report in February by the exile Tibetan government.

On 29th January a government delegation told the abbot of Ramoche Monastery in Lhasa to remove all Dalai Lama photographs, but monks refused to co- operate and threatened to boycott religious ceremonies if the order was carried out.

The decision to ban pictures of Dalai Lama in monasteries follows a ban in July 1994 which prevented Government officials from having portraits of the Dalai Lama in their offices or in government accommodation.

The photographs have been banned on the technical ground that they are now deemed to be "reactionary propaganda", an attempt to justify the apparent contradict with Article 36 of the Chinese Constitution which promises citizens freedom of religious belief. Photographs of the missing 7-year old child, Gendun Choekyi Nyima, recognised last May by the Dalai Lama but not by the Chinese government as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama, were banned even from private possession last year, but the order was not published.