Published by: World Tibet Network News, Wednesday, March 27, 1996

BEIJING, March 25 (AP) China has tightened its hold on Tibet with crackdowns on religious and pro-independence activists, a dramatic increase in arrests and routine torture of detainees, according to a report released Tuesday.

The 80-page report by the Tibet Information Network and Human Rights Watch-Asia was timed to coincide with debate on China's human rights record by the U.N. Human Rights Commission, now meeting in Geneva.

"In its drive to crush dissent, the Chinese state is widening the range of discontent, increasingly criminalizing the process of political criticism, and imprisoning more ordinary Tibetans than at any time since the late 1980s,"when pro-independence protests led to martial law, the report said.

China's Foreign Ministry had no comment when contacted Monday. It has simply dismissed similar reports in the past and noted Beijing's efforts to modernize Tibet's economy.

The Tibet Information Network is a London-based monitoring group with extensive contacts inside Tibet and among Tibetan exiles, while New York-based Human Rights Watch has reported extensively on abuses in China.

The report documents arrests from 1990 to 1995, based on about 1,000 statements from Tibetans who were former prisoners or who escaped Tibet.

In 1990, the year after martial law was imposed on Tibet's capital, Lhasa, 69 Tibetans were known to have been arrested for political offenses. By last year, the report said the number had risen to 231.

The report said more than 800 Tibetans are known to be in political detention, but the actual figure may be higher. Most were never given a trial.

It said the trend "appears in part to have been facilitated by the failure ... of the international community and particularly the U.S. to sustain pressure on China concerning human rights issues."

That allowed Chinese security forces to strike at the Tibetan underground in 1993, arresting up to 50 members, destroying many groups around Lhasa and fragmenting the movement's communication with the outside world. It took two years before the 1993 arrests became known outside Tibet, the report said.

The report's title, "Cutting off the Serpent's Head," was taken from a speech by a top official who said, "To kill a serpent, we must first chop off its head." The head refers to the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader; the serpent is the Tibetan independence movement.

The saying became synonymous with a widespread campaign begun in 1994 to root out potential troublemakers and severely restrict religious activity, which is considered a sign of loyalty to the Dalai Lama, san francisco, usa, stati uniti