Published by: World Tibet Network News, Wednesday, May 22 1996 (Part I)

BEIJING, May 21 (UPI) -- A top Chinese official called Tuesday for more accurate research on Tibet to "refute the fallacy" that China disregards human rights in the Himalayan region and has destroyed Tibetan culture.

Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme, vice chairman of the national committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, exhorted the China Tibetology Research Center to concentrate on politics, economics, culture, history and religion.

His remarks, carried by the official Xinhua news agency, follow reports of a violent crackdown by Chinese officials at one of Tibet's largest monasteries, which seriously injured up to 80 Buddhist nuns, monks and other Tibetans.

The London-based Amnesty International said Monday three monks from the Ganden Monastery, 25 miles (40 km) east of the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, were shot and wounded by police during an anti-Chinese protest May 7 against a ban on displaying pictures of the dalai lama.

Two truckloads of seriously injured people arrived at a hospital in Lhasa with a police escort May 14, Amnesty said, in another violent incident triggered by the picture prohibition.

"It's appalling that people have been shot and severely beaten merely for displaying pictures of their spiritual leader," Amnesty said. "The Chinese authorities have shown contempt for the Tibetan people's human rights of freedom of religion and peaceful expression."

Authorities in Tibet started banning photographs of the exiled dalai lama in monasteries and public places in April in a sign of tighter religious restrictions amid a year-long campaign to discredit the dalai lama.

Religious Tibetans treasure photographs of the dalai lama, revered as a god-king. The 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner fled into exile in India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

Ngapoi called on the Beijing-based center to "refute the fallacy that China has destroyed Tibetan culture and trampled human rights in Tibet."

He insisted upon "full and accurate data" and said the work would "serve the unification of the motherland and the unity of all of China's ethnic nationalities."

Founded in 1986, the center has published 222 books under its professed aim of facilitating the opening up and modernization drive in Tibet and other Tibetan-inhabited areas.

Local Tibetan residents said the Ganden Monastery has been sealed off to visitors and Drepung Monastery, 4 miles (6 km) west of Lhasa, and the Ramoche Temple, were also closed.

In recent months, China's state-run press has been arguing the dalai lama does not have the qualifications to be the spiritual leader and accuses him of seeking independence.

Recent issues of the Tibet Daily have been packed with warnings of heightened pro-independence activity.