Published by: World Tibet Network News, Thursday, May 2, 1996

HONG KONG, (Apr. 30) IPS - Monasteries in Tibet have been barred from displaying photographs of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spitirual leader, in what Tibet watchers and media say is an escalating campaign by the Chinese authorities to weaken his support.

Tourists who were in Tibet last week say that plainclothes policemen visited hotels and restaurants in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and also ordered hotels and restaurants not to display any photographs of the exiled leader.

"They came to where we were staying and the staff had to remove all photos of the Dalai Lama," said one tourist who saw two policemen giving orders. "Local people were saying 'They cannot remove him from our heart', and things like that," said the tourist, who asked not to be named.

Several pictures of the Dalai Lama had already been taken down in the Jokhang, the main temple in Lhasa, as well as in the Yak Hotel, the Snowlands Hotel and various restaurants, according to tourists.

The London-based Tibet Information Network (TIN), confirmed reports of the police actions, but said a picture of the Dalai Lama still remains in the Potala Place, former home of the spiritual leader.

Pictures also remain in the main office of the Jokhang and in the monks' rooms, "but every single small one in front of any statue has gone," said the tourist.

She said that in some places the pictures of the Dalai Lama have been replaced by photographs of the 10th Panchen Lama, who died in Beijing in 1989 and was widely seen as a Chinese puppet although a covert nationalist.

There are accounts of symbolic resistance in Lhasa to the order. Some street traders are now placing empty picture frames on their stalls alongside photographs of permitted lamas as a gesture against the new decree, tourists said.

And according to TIN reports, in Gyu-Me Tantric College in Lhasa, monks have removed a famous picture of the Dalai Lama from one of their shrines but have refused to take down other pictures of the exiled leader.

In late January an official delegation told the abbot of Ramoche Monastery in Lhasa to remove all Dalai Lama photographs, but monks refused to cooperate and threatened to boycott religious ceremonies if the order was carried out.

Government officials were already banned, since July 1994, from having portraits of the Dalai Lama in their offices or in any form of government accommodation.

According to TIN, the police visits to Lhasa hotels came two weeks after a ban on public displays of photographs of the Dalai Lama was announced on the front page of the April 5 edition of the official Tibet Daily.

The hanging of the Dalai's portrait in temples should gradually be banned," said the announcement. The announcement cited a previous circular on seizing and confiscating "reactionary propaganda materials and stepping up anti-infiltration work in religious activities centers. That circular however only referred to religious institutions. "It is unclear why police are enforcing the new rules in secular establishments as well as monasteries or why the ban is not being implemented gradually as stated in the announcement," said Robbie Barnett of TIN.

"Usually the strategy is different: they (the Chinese authorities) impose a new regulation in one place and wait to see what the reaction is," said one Tibetan in Lhasa quoted by TIN. "When it is okay, they extend little by little. Now it looks as if they do not care about the reactions from inside or outside."

Barnett notes: "The publication of such a ban in a major newspaper is also unusual and suggests increasing confidence among the (Chinese) leadership in the region."

Tibet Daily indicated that the ban is part of an escalating effort to remove the Dalai Lama from his dominant position in Tibetan Buddhism.

"The Dalai is no longer a religious leader who can bring happiness to the masses, but a guilty person of the motherland and the people," the newspaper said.

Such inflammatory statements, coupled with the subsequent police actions represent the most confrontational step taken so far by the authorities in a year-long campaign against the personal standing of the Dalai Lama, says TIN.

The rift between Beijing and the Dalai Lama has been worsening these past few months, beginning last November with China's selection of a Tibetan boy as the new Panchen Lama, the second holiest monk in Tibetan Buddhism.

In a rarely used Buddhist ritual conducted by Tibetan monks and Chinese officials in the sacred Johkang Temple, six-year-old Gyaincain Norbu was designated as the reincarnation of the second highest spiritual leader in the Himalayan kingdom.

He succeeded the 10th Panchen Lama, who until his death seven years ago was the most influential religious leader to remain in Tibet after the aborted 1959 uprising and the flight of the Dalai Lama to India.

Last May, the Dalai Lama, who traditionally recognizes Tibetan Buddhism's senior clerics, had selected another boy, the six-year-old son of a sheep herder, as the Panchen Lama.

China angrily rejected the choice and denounced the Dalai Lama for not following proper rituals and encouraging Tibet's simmering separatist movement.