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

BEIJING May 24(AP)--In its crackdown on the Tibetan independence movement, China denounced the Dalai Lama and announced it would root out sabotage and halt bombings, killings and other criminal activities.

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.

Government-run Tibet Radio, monitored by the British Broadcasting Corp., announced the new measures, and said those who gave themselves up or informed on others before the end of June would be treated leniently.

Police opened fire on stone-throwing monks 19 days ago, wounding three of them, the Tibet Information Network, a London-based monitoring group, reported. Another monk was believed to have been beaten and critically injured.

One of the most important monasteries in Tibet, Ganden, remained virtually abandoned, the group said.

Bombings in Tibet have been reported sporadically since last summer, but the numbers cannot be confirmed.

After the Dalai Lama last May chose a 6-year-old Tibetan boy as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibet's next-highest spiritual leader, Beijing named its own 6-year-old and launched a campaign to discredit the Dalai Lama.

Since then, supervision of monasteries and temples has been tightened, and senior religious figures have been called on to denounce the Dalai Lama.

China's official Xinhua News Agency reported that a high-ranking monk, Drobkang Tubdain Kedrob, accused the Dalai Lama and his followers of disrupting Tibet's stability.

The May 16 Tibet Daily, seen in Beijing today, warned that harsher control would be placed on temples and monasteries where monks and nuns have been calling for independence.

The measures are among the harshest Beijing has imposed on Tibet since it began relaxing religious controls 20 years ago. They also signal Beijing'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.