Published by: World Tibet Network News, Sunday, Jun 2, 1996

By Jane Macartney

BEIJING May 29 (Reuter) - China has taken new measures against independence movements in its restive outlying regions, warning Buddhist Tibet not to use religion as a cover for separatism and banning new mosques in Muslim Xinjiang.

In Xinjiang, a vast frontier region in the far northwest populated mainly by members of the Uighur nationality, one local official accused "people in the United States" of backing separatists fighting for independence.

"The Xinjiang splittists collude with international forces. Some people in the United States support these national separatists in order to split Xinjiang from China," the official said by telephone Wednesday.

In Tibet, police repeated a June 30 deadline for separatist "assassins" to surrender and President Jiang Zemin presented a calligraphic admonition warning that the Communist Party held sway alongside the temple gods.

Buddhist monks and communist officials unveiled the huge board inscribed with Jiang's calligraphy Tuesday at the ancient Tashilunpo monastery in Tibet's second city of Xigaze.

"Safeguard the Country and Benefit the People," he wrote in golden characters on the plaque, hung beside hundreds of Buddha statues over the door to the main hall in the monastery, the seat of the Panchen Lama, Tibet's second holiest monk.

Jiang's gift "stresses the need to guide religion to adapt to socialist society," Xinhua news agency quoted Raidi (one name), the local parliament chairman as telling the 800 monks.

"China will by no means tolerate any splittist activities by the Dalai (Lama) group in exile under the cover of religion and with the backing of foreign hostile forces, which are intended to oppose the party leadership," Raidi said.

China accuses the region's exiled god-king, the Dalai Lama, of fomenting unrest and was furious last year when he named an alternative reincarnation of the Panchen Lama.

"I feel very happy today, I thank the president from the bottom of my heart," Xinhua quoted the six-year-old 11th Panchen Lama, Beijing's officially sanctioned reincarnation, as saying at the ceremony in Xigaze, 140 miles southwest of the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.

Four Chinese emperors had presented such plaques to the monastery and this was the first by a Communist Party chief, Xinhua said.

Officials have recently issued notices to separatists to surrender and warned those who carry out bombings and assassinations that they would be severely punished.

"The net of justice covers all, there can be no escape. Those who admit their crimes can repent and be saved," said a notice on the front page of the Tibet Daily of May 21, seen in Beijing Wednesday.

"All those criminals must stop their evil acts and must surrender to the local public security authorities before June 30," the notice said.

Thse who did not trn themselves in would face severe punishment according to the law, it said.

Official media have said the number of bombings by Tibetan separatists in the restive region doubled in 1995.

China has ruled Tibet since the People's Liberation Army marched into Lhasa in August 1951.

In Xinjiang, bordering Tibet as well as Pakistan, Afghanistan and three former Soviet central Asian states, the authorities continued their crackdown on Muslim activists.

An official said by telephone Wednesday that government leaders seeking to end a series of assassinations of cadres and pro-government mullahs had banned the construction of new mosques and tightened controls on religion.

Muslim separatists stabbed and injured a 73-year-old mullah May 10, an official in Kashgar in southwestern Xinjiang told Reuters.

Aronghan Aji, a member of a government advisory body, was still in hospital but in good condition, the official said, adding police has caught the mullah's attackers.

The official Xinjiang Daily said in its May 24 edition seen in Beijing Wednesday that border security between Xinjiang and central Asian states was being reinforced to curb weapons smuggling and crack down on separatists.

A local official said at the weekend an underground group of Muslim "splittists" based in the regional capital Urumqi had killed six or seven people and injured four since February.

"Some people use religion for illegal activities, they produce home-made bombs and guns to kill influential religious figures," one official said Wednesday.

Earlier this month Xinjiang authorities launched a crackdown on separatists after nine Muslim activists, armed with guns and home-made bombs, were killed in a clash with Chinese authorities April 29 in the region's Kuqa district.

Tuesday Uighur leaders in neighboring Kazakhstan accused China of arresting 4,700 of their ethnic kin in the crackdown and said the bombings were probably staged by Beijing.

China says Xinjiang is an integral part of its territory and has used strong methods to counter dissent, sending troops to suppress uprisings and pressuring neighboring countries to crack down on separatists operating from their territories.