Published by: World Tibet Network News, Wednesday, May 22 1996 Part II of II

By Jane Macartney

BEIJING May 20 (Reuter) -Authorities in Tibet have widened a ban on pictures of the region's exiled god-king, the Dalai Lama, amid signs that pro-independence activitists have taken to bombings and other more violent means to back their campaign.

Local residents said Monday the ban on pictures of the man Beijing blames for inciting anti-Chinese unrest in the Himalayan region had been extended from monasteries and temples to schools and private homes.

In recent days, China has ordered police to crack down hard on separatist "terrorists" in the predominantly Buddhist region as well as in northwestern Xinjiang, where officials have warned of a Muslim holy war.

A Xinjiang court jailed a Muslim man for three years for distributing subversive materials amid a campaign to stamp out religious-inspired "terrorism" in the mainly Muslim area.

China last week ordered police in Tibet, which Beijing regards as an integral part of China, to stamp out a campaign of "terrorist" bombings by groups that support the Dalai Lama, the Tibet Daily said.

"The biggest hidden danger to our region's stability and security is from the sabotage and trouble created by the Dalai Lama separatist clique," a Tibet Daily editorial said.

"Political incidents and some criminal cases fully expose their ugly faces," it said. "We must combine the crackdown against criminals with the struggle against such separatist political activities."

One factory official said by telephone from Lhasa Monday: "We have launched mobilization meetings and will carry out home-by-home searc

Last month, the authorities in Tibet issued a ban on the display in temples and monasteries of photographs of the deeply venerated leader, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his peaceful campaign for more autonomy for his homeland.

Attempts to impose the ban around Lhasa, the capital of the deeply religious region, provoked anger among lamas, local residents said.

One monk was shot and wounded by police May 7 after monks threw rocks and fighting broke out with a working group sent to enforce the edict in the 15th-century mountain-top Ganden monastery, 25 miles east of Lhasa, reports from the region said.

Local residents said the monastery had since been sealed off.

School authorities in Lhasa said they had begun meetings of pupils to publicize the restrictions and were carrying out checks for displays of the pictures.

"Some families still have pictures of the Dalai Lama," one school official said by telephone. "It is a problem of belief."

However, most of those who refused to take down Dalai Lama pictures were the elderly, he added.

"Some of the people who hang Dalai Lama pictures, especially old men, believe he is a religious leader but other people have a political purpose," he said.

The Dalai Lama fled into exile in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule over Tibet, and Beijing accuses him of fomenting Tibetan independence and stirring up anti-Chinese sentiment from his home in India to try to split China.

Pictures of the Dalai Lama had been allowed in Tibet since 1979 as part of a Chinese decision to allow religious freedom in the region which Beijing regards as an intergral part of China.

Beijing's tolerance of support for the Dalai Lama has been strained since last year when he identified an alternative choice to that of China's as the reincarnated Panchen Lama, the region's second most important spiritual leader.

In the Xinjiang incident the Urumqi Intermediate Court found Abuduwayiti Aihamati guilty last Tuesday of writing and distributing materials "with the goal of splitting the unity of the motherland," according to the May 15 edition of the Xinjiang Daily seen in Beijing Monday.

But the court gave him a light sentence for a crime that carries a maximum penalty of death because he had shown repentance, the newspaper said.

Local Muslim religious leaders reiterated the Communist Party's stance that ethnic separatism was the biggest threat to stability in Xinjiang, the newspaper said.

China has waged a sometimes brutal campaign to counter religious and ethnic separatism in Xinjiang, using troops to crush uprisings and pressuring surrounding Central Asian republics to crack down on Xinjiang separatists operating from their territory.

Diplomats said a strategic accord China signed last month with Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to guard against military clashes along its border would help Beijing to combat any surge in Muslim sentiment and separatism in Xinjiang.