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

By Velisarios Kattoulas

BEIJING, May 24 (Reuter) - China feted the 45th anniversary of a political accord which led to the "liberation" of Tibet as an official radio station announced the sacking of a top Buddhist monk from a symbolic regional committee.

Thursday's anniversary of the 1951 agreement, effectively incorporating Tibet into China, coincided with officials entering monasteries to try to put down anti-Chinese unrest.

Tensions were caused by fresh attempts to enforce a ban on display of pictures of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled god-king.

Then came a report from Lhasa radio, monitored by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), that the monk responsible for finding Tibetan Buddhism's second-holiest lama had been stripped of his role in Tibet's Regional Committee.

"Qiazha Qiangbachilie has...lost the basic principle and political standing of a patriotic personage," the BBC quoted the radio as saying on Wednesday.

Qiazha Qiangbachilie, whose Tibetan name is Chadrel Rinpoche, has been in detention since last May, following Beijing's rejection of his choice of the six-year-old Gedhum Choekyi Nyima as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama.

Last December, Beijing saddened many Tibetans including the region's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, by appointing its own candidate, Gyaincain Norbu, also six, to succeed the 10th Panchen Lama, who died in Beijing in 1989 aged 50.

Gedhum Choekyi Nyima and his family had also been arrested, western human rights groups said.

"On 22nd May (was) removed Qiazha Qiangbachilie from his posts of member, standing committee member, and vice chairman of the Sixth Tibet Autonomous Regional CPPCC Committee," the radio said. The Committee, which is made up of former aristocrats and lamas without links to the Communist Party, has little power.

In a separate report, the BBC said on Thursday that Tibetan judicial and security authorities had offered lenient treatment for separatists who surrender before June 30.

"Those who take the initiative to frankly confess their wrongdoings and report and expose crimes of other offenders with good results should have reduced or no punishment," it quoted official Tibet Radio as saying on Wednesday.

"Those who refuse to surrender themselves to law enforcement authorities, run away, or even continue to commit crimes will be punished more severely," it said.

Tibet Radio spoke of continued instability in the region, referred to violent separatist activities and said the limited amnesty was intended to stamp out offences including "cases of explosion and assassination committed by separatists."

A Tibet Religious Affairs Bureau official said the 15th-century mountain-top Ganden monastery, closed on May 6 after a violent clash between lamas and a work team sent to implement the ban, would stay sealed off for at least two months.

"The work team is now educating the monks in the Ganden monastery," the official said in a telephone interview. "These lamas are young, they come from remote areas and are less educated. So the work team must teach them."

He said many of the 700 monks at the monastery, some 40 km (24 miles) east of Lhasa, had left.

It was unclear whether they had left voluntarily after the clash in which several monks were reported to have been detained and at least two were hurt.

Other monasteries and temples in and around Lhasa that closed after that clash had reopened, the official said.

Amid the violence and crackdowns, the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily, hailed the May 23, 1951 accord which brought Tibet into the People's Republic.

The 17-clause agreement "returned (Tibet) to the embrace of the great family of the motherland and opened the way for the Tibetan people to leave dark suffering and enter a bright new age of happiness," a lengthy commentary said.

The People's Liberation Army entered Tibet in 1951 and marched into the capital, Lhasa, in August of that year.

The Dalai Lama, who in 1989 won the Nobel Peace Prize for his peaceful struggle for an autonomous Tibet, fled into exile in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule.