Published by: World Tibet Network News, Monday, August 5, 1996

BEIJING, Aug 5 (Reuter) - China has condemned as "sheer lies" a report by a U.S. human rights group that said there had been new crackdowns on monasteries in Tibet.

"Human Rights Watch/Asia's unwarranted attack on China on the Tibet issue and the crackdown on crime was deliberately fabricated, and confused right with wrong," the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday.

It quoted an unnamed leading Chinese official for human rights as saying in reference to the report that "the contents and individual cases do not at all tally with the actual situations."

Human Rights Watch/Asia said in a July report that soldiers shot and wounded three monks and arrested up to 90 others at Ganden monastery on the outskirts of Lhasa in May after a stone-throwing incident and the beating of at least one Chinese official.

The report said the incident flared after Communist officials ordered the removal of a photograph of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader. It also quoted Chinese officials as saying the monastery would be closed for two to three months, adding that China had issued a directive in February to shut politically active monasteries.

"According to the relevant Chinese departments, the government never issued such a directive," Xinhua said.

The news agency also said the report had given an exaggerated account of the prison life of Xi Yang, a reporter for a Hong Kong newspaper sentenced in March 1994 to 12 years' jail for allegedly stealing state secrets.

The report said Xi Yang could not eat, had heart palpitations and complained in a letter to his wife that he never saw the sun.