from: TIN News Update / 28 January, 1996 full/ ISSN 1355-3313

A worker at Tibet's main newspaper sabotaged a recent edition of the paper to indicate discontent with Chinese policy over the Panchen Lama succession, according to unofficial sources in Lhasa.

The unknown newspaper worker altered a front page photograph in the Tibetan language edition of the Tibet Daily so that China's top leaders appear to be sitting behind a row of Tibetan lamas instead of in front of them.

The incident has emerged as signs of more violent opposition are reported to China's decision last November to appoint its own protege to the second highest position in Tibetan Buddhism. A Hong Kong paper today claimed that a bomb had exploded outside the house of the main Tibetan lama who supported the Chinese authorities in the succession dispute.

According to reports from the Tibetan capital no-one has so far been identified as responsible for the alteration in the newspaper photograph, which looks at first glance like a printing error. The newspaper, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party in Tibet, usually carries the same photographs and text as the previous day's edition of Xizang Ribao, the Chinese-language edition of Tibet Daily.

The photograph, which had been published in its untampered form throughout China a day earlier, showed President Jiang Zemin, General Liu Huaqing and four other Party leaders sitting in front of three rows of senior Tibetan lamas and dignitaries. It had been printed prominently on the front page of the People's Daily, the English-language China Daily, and the Xizang Ribao on 13th November 1995, and was intended to show the Party's control over the selection process for the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama.

But when it appeared the next day in the Bod-jong Nyen-re Tsag-par, the Tibetan-language edition of Xizang Ribao, the picture had been reduced and shifted to a corner of the front page, and the first row of lamas had been copied to the bottom of the picture, so that the Chinese leaders have one row of lamas in front of them as well as three rows behind.

The alteration to the photograph is crudely done, without any attempt to disguise the join where the front row has been added, probably so that the newspaper workers involved could argue that it was a production error. Photographers in London who were shown the newspaper said it was unlikely to have been done unintentionally and Tibetans contacted in Lhasa have described the photograph as a veiled criticism of Chinese policy.

The photograph shows the formal conclusion on 11th November last year of a much publicised meeting in Beijing, at which Tibetan lamas had been told by President Jiang to accelerate the process of choosing a new Panchen Lama. "Tibetan soul search nears end - President calls for early confirmation", said the China Daily in its front page headline over the original version of the photograph. The lama leading the search team had delayed the process for nearly 6 years in an attempt to get the Chinese to accept a child confirmed by the Dalai Lama in exile, and has been missing, believed imprisoned, for the last eight months.

The Tibetan lamas shown in the picture, described officially only as members of the "Leading Group for Locating the Reincarnation Child of the Panchen Lama", had been ordered to Beijing a week earlier and had agreed, apparently under strong Chinese pressure, not to recognise the child identified by the Dalai Lama as the correct reincarnation. A different child was selected under Chinese guidance two weeks later and enthroned in Shigatse on 8th December.

The 24 lamas and dignitaries in the picture are not identified by name in any of the newspapers and look grim and uncomfortable, squashed behind the President and General Liu, both of whom are smiling for the camera. A senior lama from southern Gansu, formerly part of the north-eastern Tibetan area known as Amdo, is known to have made a statement at the meeting protesting against the decision to reject the Dalai Lama's nominee.

Subversive comments rarely find their way into official Chinese papers, although in March 1991 a Chinese student in the US succeeded in getting the People's Daily to publish an apparently innocent poem called "Yuan Xiao" which, when read diagonally, called for Premier Li Peng to be replaced. The incident led to an enquiry into the newspaper by the Public Security Bureau.

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