Heavy Security Surrounds Panchen Lama In Tibet

SHIGATSE, Tibet, China (Reuters) - The nine-year-old boy picked by Beijing as Tibet's second holiest figure is under heavy police protection because of fears for his safety on his first return to the Himalayan region.

Monday, the Panchen Lama was escorted in a 21-vehicle police motorcade to a sacred Buddhist ritual in his own monastery in Shigatse, Tibet's second city.

Monks with walkie-talkies patrolled the grounds of the Tashi Lhunpo monastery, and Buddhist pilgrims were kept at a distance.

The motorcade included an emergency medical vehicle and three police cars, with flashing red and blue lights.

During Monday's ceremony a giant Tibetan thanka, a satin embroidered icon roughly 15 stories high, was unfurled by horn-blowing monks behind the monastery, which houses the world's biggest bronze Buddha.

Chinese authorities are using the visit to try to boost the legitimacy of the 11th Panchen Lama against a rival named by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled god king and Buddhist spiritual leader.

According to accounts by witnesses and interviews with monks, security precautions have been elaborate and the reaction of Tibet's devout Buddhist population has been wary.

Nema Tsering, deputy chairman of the Tibet autonomous region government, blamed the tight security on pro-independence forces who, he said, were led by the Dalai Lama.

"In Tibet the splittist and anti-splittist struggle is continuous," he told reporters.

"We have to take responsibility for his (the Panchen Lama's) security. I guarantee things will settle down after a while."

In Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, troops with machine guns ringed the Jokhang temple when the Panchen Lama visited earlier this month under cover of darkness early in the morning, one monk said.

The main road to Lhasa's international airport was sealed off.

Tibet has been hit by sporadic bombings linked to pro-independence forces fighting what they see as Chinese occupation of their homeland.

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule, and now heads a government in exile in India struggling for Tibetan autonomy.

The 10th Panchen Lama died in the Tashi Lhunpo monastery in 1989 after spending eight years in Chinese jails and many more years in house arrest for denouncing Chinese brutality in Tibet.

Wang Dui, the second ranking administrative official at the Jokhang temple, told foreign reporters the 11th Panchen Lama was welcomed "very warmly and with great pomp." But a red-robed monk, speaking out of earshot, said: "Of course he doesn't have any support. "He came at night and there were troops everywhere. He just sat there looking uncomfortable.

"I really felt sorry for him. He's being used as a pawn," the monk said.

The official Xinhua news agency reported on a Buddhist ritual the Panchen Lama attended last week.

"The Panchen Lama has an unusual understanding of the sutras besides his outstanding memory, convincing his followers that he is the true reincarnation of the last Panchen Lama," it quoted one of the boy's teachers as saying.

Monday, a group of western reporters was allowed to watch the Panchen Lama's motorcade arrive at the Tashi Lhunpo monastery, but were barred from seeing him in the flesh. He was apparently in a black Toyoto Landcruiser, but it was impossible to see him through the heavily tinted windows.

It was the closest foreign journalists have ever got to the Panchen Lama, hailed as the "soul boy" by state media.

Asked what he thought about the Panchen Lama, one monk jabbed his thumb toward a thickset official in a trench coat then pressed a finger to his lips. "I don't know," said another monk when asked the same question.

The nine-year-old boy has been living in Beijing under the tutelage of Tibetan Buddhist lamas since 1995 when his name was plucked from a golden urn in a lottery organized by China's atheist authorities.

Months earlier, the Dalai Lama had infuriated Beijing by unilaterally announcing his own choice as Panchen Lama, setting off a row that has poisoned relations between the two sides.

The 10-year-old named by the Dalai Lama has been held by Chinese authorities under virtual house arrest with his family since 1995 at an unknown location.