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

(Monk fired in Tibet, new reports of violence, grafs 1-12)

By Jane Macartney

BEIJING May 25 (Reuter) - A crackdown on pro-independence movements in China's outlying regions gathered momentum Thursday as a top monk was fired in Buddhist Tibet and religious study groups were proscribed in Muslim Xinjiang.

Tibet Radio spoke of continued instability and violent separatist activities and said a limited amnesty was being offered until June 30 to stamp out offenses including "cases of explosion and assassination committed by separatists."

Chinese authorities stepped up enforcement of a new ban on pictures of the Himalayan region's exiled god-king, the Dalai Lama, sealing off a monastery for several months after a violent clash with lamas.

Lhasa Radio in the region's capital said the monk responsible for finding Tibetan Buddhism's second-holiest lama had been stripped of his role in the Regional Committee.

The committee, made up of former aristocrats and lamas without links to the Communist Party, has little power but is of symbolic importance.

The monk, Qiazha Qiangbachilie, whose Tibetan name is Chadrel Rinpoche, has been in detention since last May, following Beijing's rejection of his choice of the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama.

"Qiazha Qiangbachilie has...lost the basic principle and political standing of a patriotic personage," Lhasa Radio said, as quoted by the BBC.

Last December, Beijing upset many Tibetans by appointing its own candidate, six-year-old Gyaincain Norbu, to succeed the 10th Panchen Lama, who died in Beijing in 1989 aged 50.

Gedhum Choekyi Nyima, also 6, Qiazha Qiangbachilie's choice, and his family were arrested, Western human rights groups said.

The BBC Thursday quoted the official Tibet Radio as saying 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," the radio said.

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

The crackdown in Tibet coincided with the 45th anniversary Thursday of the 1951 accord effectively incorporating Tibet into China when Chinese troops marched into the area.

Residents said by telephone the campaign to strip the Dalai Lama's pictures from monasteries and temples as well as offices, schools and homes had sparked anger.

An official of the Tibet Religious Affairs Bureau said the 15th-century mountain-top Ganden monastery, closed May 6 after a violent clash between lamas and workers sent to enforce the ban, would remain sealed off for at least two to three months.

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

Many of the 700 monks had left the monastery, 24 miles east of Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, he said.

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

A factory official said all work units in Lhasa had been ordered to report on the results of the picture ban by May 25.

The Dalai Lama fled into exile in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule. His pictures had been allowed in Tibet since 1979 as part of a Chinese decision to allow religious freedom. In 1989 he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his peaceful struggle for more autonomy for Tibet.

In Xinjiang in the far northwest, bordering Pakistan, Afghanistan and three other central Asian Muslim states, a religious affairs official said a campaign had been launched to close underground Muslim 'talipu' study groups because they had been used in a violent pro-independence campaign.

She said nine Muslim separatists killed earlier this month in a bloody gunbattle with police were members of a "talipu."

Speaking by telephone from the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi, she said: "The underground 'talipus' are formed without approval from the government or religious departments.

"Some have been used by splittists to spread reactionary materials or by criminals to commit crimes."

Most members were young and unemployed, she added.

The Chinese transliteration of the word "talipu" appears to be derived from the Arabic word for student, possibly the same word used by a militant Afghan movement, the taleban.

"Once we find these illegal 'talipus', we close them and dismiss or educate those people who attend them," the official said.

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

Top officials warned this month of an upsurge in subversion, bombings and "terrorist activities," saying extremists were using the cloak of religion to incite "holy wars."

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