Published by: World Tibet Network News, Sunday, May 26 1996

BEIJING May 24(AP)--Chinese authorities in Tibet were conducting house-to-house searches for pictures of the Dalai Lama as new measures to crush support for Tibetan independence were revealed Friday.

Government-run Tibet Radio, monitored by the British Broadcasting Corp., announced a new campaign to root out sabotage, bombings, killings and other criminal activities carried out by separatists. The measures intensify a campaign to discredit the Dalai Lama that was launched in November.

The radio said separatists who surrendered or provided information on their colleagues before the end of June would be treated leniently.

The May 16 issue of the Tibet Daily, seen in Beijing on Friday, also said stricter control would be placed on temples and monasteries where monks and nuns have been calling for independence.

A Chinese decision last month to ban photographs of the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of the fervently Buddhist Tibetans, has caused some of the worst violence the Himalayan region has seen in several years.

Ganden, one of Tibet's most important monasteries, remained virtually abandoned Friday, 19 days after police opened fire on stone-throwing monks, the London-based Tibet Information Network said. Police shot and wounded at least three monks and another was believed to have been severely beaten.

The monitoring group said Chinese officials plan to keep Ganden, 25 miles east of the Tibetan capital Lhasa, sealed for up to three months. It was not clear whether most of its 600 monks left in anger or were forced to go.

Authorities have also reportedly been making house-to-house searches in some parts of the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, for pictures of the Dalai Lama.

Bombings in Tibet have been reported sporadically since last summer. Robert Barnett of the Tibet Information Network said his group has heard of at least eight bombings but that information on them was sketchy.

Barnett said one bomb went off outside the home of a senior Tibetan leader who backed Beijing in its dispute with the Dalai Lama over the naming of an important religious figure.

After the Dalai Lama chose a 6-year-old Tibetan boy last May as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Beijing named its own 6-year-old six months later and launched a campaign to discredit the exiled leader.

Since then, supervision of monasteries and temples has been tightened, senior religious figures have been called on to denounce the Dalai Lama and the photograph ban was widened to cover all Tibetans, not just officials.

The measures are among the harshest Beijing has imposed on Tibet since it began relaxing religious controls 20 years ago. They also signal China's inability to wipe out support for Tibetan independence and the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959, nine years after China's army entered Tibet.