Published by: World Tibet Network News, 96/03/29

BEIJING, March 26 (AP) -- China accused two human rights groups today of "hoodwinking" the world with a report that it has tightened its hold on Tibet with crackdowns on activists, a dramatic increase in arrests and routine torture.

"Tibetan affairs are purely China's internal affairs," the Foreign Ministry said in response to the 80-page report by the Tibet Information Network and Human Rights Watch-Asia, accusing the groups of meddling out of "ulterior motives ... calumniating the Chinese government and hoodwinking international opinion."

"These acts, which are extremely irresponsible, will work to no avail at all," the ministry said. "People in Tibet are enjoying adequate freedom and full rights invested by the constitution and law."

The report, timed to coincide with debate on China's human rights record by the U.N. Human Rights Commission, now meeting in Geneva, disagreed.

"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.

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.

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.

The restrictions are said to include a cap on the number of nuns and monks allowed in each religious institution, de facto bans keeping all community leaders from religious activities -- not just Communist Party members, who are required to be atheists -- and arbitrary closure of religious institutions.

The report said the increase in arrests also reflects the spread of dissent and discontent to rural and nomadic areas. It said protests, likewise, have expanded from pro-independence demonstrations to marches against price increases, forced labor and other issues.

The report said that with arrests up, detainees are routinely tortured and forced to endure long periods of exposure to cold and crippling beatings, and often are subjected to electric shocks.

One religious activist, only 12 when arrested, died three years later, just after her release. Her kidneys had been severely damaged by beatings, the report quoted a Tibetan undertaker as saying.