from: TIN News Update / 4 March, 1996 full / ISSN 1355-3313

A nunnery and a monastery in western Tibet have been closed down by the authorities, according to unofficial reports from the area, indicating that tougher restrictions on religion are being gradually implemented in rural areas of Tibet. The Chinese authorities in Tibet announced two weeks ago that monasteries where monks or nuns were involved in political unrest would be closed, and ordered religious believers to "dedicate themselves jointly to the construction cause of socialist modernization".

"We must close the doors of lamaseries which have serious problems or where political problems often occur for overhauling and consolidation and set a time limit for correction," said a statement by Tibet's Committee of Nationalities and Religious Affairs, carried on the front page of the February 15 edition of the official Tibet Daily. The first reports of monastery closures indicate that the practice has already begun in some remote rural areas and in one case suggest that the "overhauling and consolidation" was permanent, since most of the buildings were immediately demolished. The case involved 20 women at Shongchen nunnery, in Ngamring county, 100 km west of Shigatse, who were ordered to leave their nunnery on 29th November last year, according to the unofficial reports. Local officials are said to have told the nuns that orders had been received from Chen Kuiyuan, secretary of the Tibet Communist Party, saying that all the nuns should return to their homes. They were told that they could not join any o

ther nunnery, but had to resume farming work. Shongchen is in the southern part of Nakhu neighbourhood in Targyu township, Ngamring county. The women were given five days to demolish the buildings they had constructed at the nunnery as living quarters. The temple they had built appears to have been allowed to remain standing, but the nuns were told they could not use it. The nearby monastery of Doglho, which contained ten monks, is also said to have been closed down and the monks ordered to return to their homes. The reports, which are unconfirmed, do not make it clear if the nuns and monks had been involved in political activity, but say that the lama in charge of the nunnery "was taken away in a jeep and has disappeared", suggesting that he has been arrested. Lama Khedrup Gyatso, who comes from Kham in eastern Tibet, had inspired the reconstruction of the temple in Shongchen, which had been destroyed during the Chinese authorities crack- down on culture and religion between 1959 and 1979.

The reconstruction, only recently completed, was funded by donations from local Tibetans.

- Nunnery Closed in Lhokha; Religious Policy Tightens

- The policy of closing monasteries has previously applied to institutions constructed without official permission, or only with local permission, but last month's announcement in Tibet Daily is believed to be the first time officials have been publicly told to close institutions down for political reasons. The nunnery of Namrab Samtenling in Gongkar county, in Lhokha, southern Tibet, was closed down in March 1994 by officials of the Religious Affairs Bureau from Tsetang, on the grounds that it had been built without permission. Locals say that in fact permission for the building had been granted, but that officials subsequently claimed that separate consent had been required to consecrate the temple. The fourteen women who lived at the nunnery, together with their teacher, a monk, were given one week to leave. The nunnery, which belonged to the Sakyapa school, had been rebuilt by the nuns with money raised from local Tibetans three years earlier. The teacher was allowed to return to his home monastery b

ut the nuns were sent back to their homes. Officials had threatened to demolish the nunnery building, but allowed it to remain standing under the care of a local farmer, who told them that he planned to use it as a sheep pen. The tougher policy towards monks and nuns was given formal articulation by China's leaders in a policy meeting called the "Third Forum on Work in Tibet", held in Beijing in July 1994. It ordered stricter controls on religion in Tibet, including the banning of any new monasteries built without permission, but the new controls are only gradually being publicised. "In view of the Dalai clique's tactics that "controlling one monastery is tantamount to controlling one district of the Chinese Communist Party", we must ... limit the number of lamas in monasteries and forbid unauthorised construction of monasteries", said the Tibet Daily on 10th March last year. By mid-1995 the local government of the Tibet Autonomous Region had already promulgated three sets of regulations on religious activit

ies, including "Regulations on the Democratic Management of Lamaseries", "the Management of Religious Affairs in Tibet", and "a Detailed Rule on the Reincarnation of the Living Buddhas".

In June 1995 the local government in Tibet created a team of officials whose job is to register all temples and monasteries in order to check their legal status and to "improve the management of religious affairs", according to the Tibet Daily of 27th June. In January 1996 a Beijing official announced that the registration of religious sites throughout China was "on top of the three major tasks for religious work this year". The tasks included singling out pro-independence activists who are involved in religious activities as targets for punishment: "those who make use of religion to interfere with administrative, judicial, martial, educational and other social affairs, especially those who take advantage of religious reasons to split the country, must be severely cracked down upon according to law," Xinhua said on 14th January. The article printed on 15th February this year was a coded announcement that the first stage of the religious rectification campaign in Tibet ordered by the Third Forum in 1994 has b

een completed - the sending of work teams to extract pledges of loyalty from monks and other religious leaders. "The overwhelming majority of lamaseries and the broad masses of monks and nuns in our region have been able to make a clean break politically with the Dalai, justly and forcefully resisted the infiltration activities of the Dalai clique", said the article, published in translation this week by the BBC Monitoring Service. "However, we should also soberly see that the negative influence of religion has expanded to a certain extent in recent years and that numerous problems still exist in some lamaseries," it said. "Some believers have blindly sought religious feelings and abandoned the anti-separatism political stand. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to strengthen the management of lamaseries and education on patriotism, socialism, and anti-separatism among the broad masses of monks, nuns, and religious believers," it continued, indicating that the campaign will be continued through political e

ducation and through ensuring that only politically reliable monks are appointed to management positions in monasteries.

The article included a description of the Party's current stand on what it now calls the socialist adaptation of Tibetan Buddhism. "The broad masses of religious personalities and religious believers [must be educated] to join with people with no religious belief to dedicate themselves jointly to the construction cause of socialist modernization. This is the demand and goal of guiding religion to be in keeping with socialism", it says, describing the struggle against "splittism" in monasteries as "the concentrated expression of the class struggle at the present stage of the region". [end]