To: Marina Sisani
- Lhasa Monasteries Closed after Monk Shot, 40 Detained -
The two main monasteries in Lhasa have been sealed off from the public by the Chinese authorities following a major protest last week in Ganden Monastery, 40 kilometres east of the Tibetan capital, which led to at least forty arrests and a number of injuries, according to sources in the city.
The forty monks are reported to have been arrested following an incident at Ganden monastery on 7th May after officials tried to impose new regulations banning photographs of the Dalai Lama from Buddhist temples, and at least one monk is reported to have been shot and wounded by police after fighting broke out and stones were thrown.
At midday on Sunday the monastery of Drepung, 6 km west of Lhasa, was closed by the authorities, apparently to prevent unrest spreading. Drepung, the third of the great monasteries in the Lhasa valley, has been closed to the public on Monday, and on the following day the temple of Ramoche was also closed, preventing the public from entering and monks from leaving the premises without permission. Both are still closed to outsiders, according to reports today,
On Tuesday the main temple in Tibet, the Jokhang, in the heart of Lhasa, staged a one-day shut-down in sympathy with the sealing off of the monasteries.
An official of the Reilgious Affairs Bureau in Lhasa, contacted by telephone today, would not comment on the reports.
A number of monks are said to have been beaten in incidents at Sera on Monday and in Ramoche the following day when officials arrived to enforce the order, according to unconfirmed reports from the city.
The unrest is believed to stem from attempts to implement a government instruction, published in Tibet's main newspaper on 5th April, ordering pictures of the exile leader the Dalai Lama to be removed from temples. Display of the pictures had been tolerated since 1979 as part of a Chinese decision to allow religious freedom, but a progressively more aggressive stand has been emerging towards the Dalai Lama since late 1994.
The 5th April instruction also ordered leaders in all monasteries to be replaced by monks known to be "patriotic", and attempts to implement this demand are believed to have been combined with efforts to remove the photographs. Government and party orders of this kind are carried out by Work Teams, known in Chinese as "gongzuo dui" or in Tibetan as "ledun rukhag", and it is one of these teams, composed of Party cadres, which entered Ganden monastery on 7th May.
"This order was met with strong protests from the monks [which] resulted in a fight between the Work Inspection Team and the monks," said the Information Department of the exile Tibetan Government in a statement issued on Wednesday from its base in northern India.
"In the scuffle, two Chinese police officials and two monks were injured. As the situation worsened, the monks ran up the hills surrounding the monastery and in self defence hurled down rocks at the Chinese officials."
The exile statement said that two monks were shot dead when police went on to open fire on the monks, and that forty others were arrested. Sources in Lhasa today confirmed accounts of unrest in Ganden last week, and estimated arrests at between fifty and sixty, and confirmed that at least one monk had received bullet wounds to the abdomen. There was no confirmation of any fatalities. [end]
