China cracks down on monastery of escaped Karmapa Lama

BEIJING, Jan 15 (AFP) - At least two monks are believed to have been detained by Chinese police investigating the apparent escape of Tibet's Karmapa Lama to India, as China continued Saturday to send mixed signals over its stance on the incident.

Armed police descended on the Tsurphu Monastery days after the Karmapa Lama, one of Tibet's most revered "Living Buddhas," left on December 28, the London-based Tibet Information Network said in a faxed statement to Beijing.

Sources close to the monastery told the network that Tsurphu monks were confined to the premises, indicating that some were being interrogated, while at least two monks were taken away to the county seat.

China officially maintains the 14-year-old Karmapa has gone abroad to retrieve Buddhist musical instruments and has not defected to the Dalai Lama's exiled Tibetan government in Dharmasala, India.

Such a position is believed to be linked to hopes in Beijing that the 17th Karmapa Lama, previously loyal to Beijing and whose monastic seat served as a "patriotic monastery," would return to Tibet and work to keep Tibet a part of Chinese control.

However the Karmapa Lama's arrival to the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala on January 5, has signalled his defection to the exiled Tibetan community led by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's most revered spiritual figure, but a "splittist" in the eyes of China's government.

On Friday, India's foreign ministry called on China to provide specific details regarding the Karmapa's departure from Tibet, including the route taken and other details, Indian officials said.

The demand was seen as an attempt by New Delhi to further probe Beijing's actual stance on the matter and possibly an attempt by India to seek a mediating role between Beijing and the Karmapa, analysts said.

The Karmapa, born Ugyen Trinley Dorji, has been recognized by both the Chinese government as well as the Dalai Lama.

Meanwhile China's top religious affairs leaders met in Beijing last Monday and while refraining from speaking publicly about the Karmapa's flight, sternly warned "foreign hostile forces" from using religion to foment separatism in China.

"(We will) according to law strengthen the management of religious affairs while respecting the religious beliefs of ethnic minorities and will firmly prevent and oppose hostile foreign forces from using religious issues to engage in ethnic splittist activities," State Councillor Ismail Amat said.

Amat's statement was seen as a direct warning to both the exiled Tibetan government and to separatist forces in Tibet to refrain from using the Karmapa's flight as a springboard to religious unrest and ethnic separatist activity in Tibet.

The Tibet Information Network said the meeting was requested by the top Chinese Communist Party leaders "to look into countermeasures" into the Karmapa's escape.

"The Chinese government believes that the Karmapa has been used and even incited by some people to defect and is also claiming that the incident has to do with exiled separatist forces of the Dalai Lama in India," it said.