Published by: World Tibet Network News, Thursday, May 16, 1996

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Thubten Samphel Pema Thinley

Phone: 22510, 22457

Dharamsala, May 15, 1996 (DIIR) -- In the aftermath of police shooting to death of two monks, over 1,200 top Lhasa cadres meet to discuss "resolute crackdown" on Tibetans. An attempt by a political investigation and education unit, known as Work Team, to take down all photos of His Holiness the Dalai Lama from the Gaden Monastery in Lhasa met with strong opposition from the monks of the Monastery.

Matters came to a head when police opened fire and killed two monks and arrested 40 others. In the aftermath of that incident, which occurred on 7 May, more than 1,200 top cadres and policemen above the County level of the Lhasa City Government met in the afternoon of 9 May to discuss an intensified, resolute crackdown on Tibetans.

The unqualified term "resolute crackdown" repeatedly occurs throughout the speeches of TAR Party Committee Deputy Secretary Raidi and Lhasa City Party Committee Secretary Lobsang Dhondup who were the main speakers at the meeting chaired by the later. The meeting and its proceeding was reported by the Tibetan service of Radio Lhasa in the evening of the same day.

Raidi told the meeting that resolute crackdown was both an important policy of the Chinese Government and an expedient duty of party and government organs at all levels to ensure social order and stability, speed up economic development, safeguard China's territorial integrity, deal with foreign forces and to achieve the targets of opening up and economic reform set by China's eighth Five-Year Plan for the year 2010.

He said the implementation of the campaign will be an acid test of the sincerity of the concerned cadres and that success will be judged by results achieved. He warned that where there would appear to be failures to give due priority to the campaign, showing of effective leadership and comprehensive implementation of the campaign as a result of which no manifest improvement in social stability appears, the concerned local level party and Government leaders will be held to explain their conduct.

In his speech Lobsang Dhondup said, order and stability throughout the TAR is dependent on the situation in Lhasa City which is the Capital of the region and its political, economic and cultural heartland and also the vital window to the policy of opening up to the outside world. "Conditions of order and stability in the Lhasa City", he said, "should set an example for the rest of the TAR."

He concluded that "within a period of three months a campaign to resolutely crackdown on the evil subversive activities of the splittists and criminals of all hue should be fully carried out."

The meeting was also attended by top TAR leaders such as Tsultrim, a TAR party standing Committee member and Secretary of the TAR Commission on Politics and Law; Thubten Tsewang, head of the TAR Party Discipline Inspection Committee; the Political Commissar of the TAR Armed Police Force unit, and Mr. Karchen, the Deputy head of the TAR Armed Police Force unit.