Published by: World Tibet Network News, Friday, August 16th 1996

From: TIN News Update / 15 August, 1996 full/

Over 300 officials are carrying out a purge of dissident monks at the three main monasteries in Tibet, with some 1,000 or more monks being asked to sign pledges of political allegiance or face expulsion from their monastery, according to unofficial reports from Lhasa.

Last week a team consisting of an estimated 150 officials from the Communist Party began an operation to register and re-educate monks in Drepung monastery, 4 km to the west of the Tibetan capital. A team of the same size has been carrying out a similar programme at Sera monastery, 3 km north of Lhasa, since 9th June, while in Ganden monastery, 40 km to the east of Lhasa, a team has been at work since early May. Each of the monasteries, established in the 15th century, has between 400 and 700 monks.

Tourists contacted in Lhasa today confirmed reports that there were large teams of officials at Drepung and Sera but said that both monasteries were still open to visitors. "We heard that monks here are having to attend re-education meetings with the officials," said one tourist in the city, who asked not to be named.

"Many of the monks in Tibet will find it difficult to stay now. They cannot accept a situation where they have to sign a statement against His Holiness," said a Ganden monk who arrived in India this week and who reported that dozens of other monks had left the monasteries and were on their way to India. Over 120, or about 60%, of the Tibetan refugees who reached Nepal or India last month were monks or nuns.

On 5th August the authorities in Tibet announced an extension of the current "Strike Hard" or anti-crime campaign, which was originally scheduled to have ended last week, and called on "the whole society to go into action [to] fight against separatists' splittist and sabotage activities."

"In particular, greater efforts must be made to improve the work of clearing up and straightening out lamaseries," said executive deputy secretary Raidi, the highest placed Tibetan cadre in the region, according to a Tibet TV broadcast monitored by the BBC. "To do this, all offices, bureaus, departments and commissions of the region are required to take the lead," the announcement continued, partly a demand that offices send members of their staff to join the re-education teams.

The statement follows a speech given by Chen Kuiyuan, the Party Secretary in the Tibet region, on 14th May. "There are a few die-hard reactionaries in the monasteries who are hell-bent on following the Dalai," Chen told members of the Tibet People's Congress, according to a transcript obtained by TIN. "In order to beat the splittist and sabotage activities of the Dalai Clique and protect the normal religious life of the masses of religious devotees, we must carry out a carefully differentiated rectification of the monasteries within our region", he said.

The teams are involved in a two-fold operation, firstly registering or re- registering all the monks, and secondly getting the monks to sign pledges of political compliance.

"I was at Drepung when the Chinese authorities announced that the monks without proper permission or registration have to leave the monastery," said a monk from Drepung monastery, who escaped from Tibet this week.

The Drepung monks were told they would get the blue-coloured identity card if they signed a document denouncing the Dalai Lama, but would otherwise face expulsion from the monasteries. "They said that we were to support the Panchen Lama recognised by the Chinese government and that we must condemn the Dalai Lama," said the monk, 20 year old Ngawang Kelsang.

"In the beginning the Chinese said they just wanted to know what our opinions were," Ngawang Kelsang added, describing what is the typical method used by re-education teams in China, "but later when all the monks opposed the statement the Chinese officials took the monks one by one and forced them to sign. They said if we accepted it we would be permitted to stay in the monastery." It is not clear if the demand applies to monks who are already registered.

Recalcitrant monks are given re-education sessions in groups of 7 or 8 at a time, and then given solo sessions if they are still resistant, according to other reports.

Other monks escaping to India this week describe the document they are being asked to sign as consisting of five political principles: opposition to separatism, the unity of Tibet and China, recognition of the Chinese- appointed Panchen Lama as the true Panchen Lama, denial that Tibet was or should be independent, and agreement that the Dalai Lama is destroying the unity of the people.

A separate source claimed that some monks in Drepung were also being told to promise not to listen to the Tibetan language broadcasts of the US radio service, Voice of America.

- Pressure on Juveniles and Eastern Tibetans to Leave Monasteries

Only about a third of the monks at the three monasteries are believed to be registered, meaning that about 1,000 others have not already obtained authorisation to become monks from the police and the local Religious Affairs Bureau. Rules banning unregistered monks from monasteries are long- standing but have not usually been implemented.

A significant number of the unregistered monks are children, contravening a little-used Chinese law which bans those under 18 from joining monasteries. In May officials are reported to have ordered the monasteries of Drepung and Sera to close their schools for younger monks, all of whom are now being told to return to their homes by the work teams.

Regulations requiring monasteries only to accept local residents as monks have now been announced, leading to the likely expulsion of scores of monks who come from eastern Tibet, outside the Tibet Autonomous Region. The three monasteries are famous as training centres for men from all over the Tibetan Buddhist world, including Mongolia, and house large numbers of Tibetans from the Tibetan areas of Amdo, in Qinghai province, and Kham, in western Sichuan.

24 year old Konchog Dondrup was one of the Amdowan monks at Sera until 13th June, when he left for India, four days after the work team began the registration process at his monastery.

"On 9th June the Chinese came to the monastery and told the leader that all the monks should come to register if they wanted to be allowed to stay in the monastery." said the monk, interviewed after his escape.

"Registration involves giving your details and giving fingerprints, and making a commitment to accept political education which they were planning to give soon after. I felt that to register was a betrayal of His Holiness and so I decided not to register and to flee to India," said Konchog, who added that Eastern Tibetans were not being allowed to register at Sera even if they accepted the conditions.

A monk from Ganden monastery said that work team officials there had announced in May that only monks born in the neighbouring prefectures of Lhasa and Nagchu would be allowed to remain in Ganden. The monastery has been closed to outsiders and tourists since a protest against the arrival of a work team there on 6th May, apart from 1st August, when it reopened briefly, and there are unconfirmed reports that many of the 700 monks resident there fled after the protest. 54 of the 63 Ganden monks arrested after the protest are still in custody, according to unofficial reports from Lhasa today.

So far there are few reports of expulsions being carried out, with only four monks from Sera known to have been formally expelled. Three other Sera monks have been in prison since mid-July after being found with copies of political leaflets.

- Re-education Teams -

Re-education drives, which are sometimes referred to as "re-structuring and reorganisation" or "overhauling and consolidation", have been stepped up since a Party meeting in July 1994 called for a tougher line to be imposed on monasteries, but they are only now being seriously implemented in the Lhasa area.

Monks who are registered get an identity card which gives them the right to travel around Tibet, and, which entitles them to attend all religious ceremonies, as well as receiving accommodation and some provisions.

Previous campaigns, sometimes known less euphemistically as "screening and investigation", have been carried out at these monasteries several times since unrest resumed in Tibet in 1987, but the scale of the current exercise is unusual. The operations are usually carried out by "work teams", or "gongzuo dui" in Chinese, which consist of less than a dozen people. The team currently in Sera is reported to consist of 150 people, plus 30 drivers and cooks, and the re-education exercise in each monastery is expected to last for 3 months.

The Sera team is led by 54 year old Lhakpa Phuntsog, a Tibetan who was made a vice-Governor of the Tibet region in 1991, where he holds the portfolios of culture and education. Before his promotion Lhakpa Phuntsog was head of the Tibetan branch of the Academy of Social Sciences, and is one of several respected Tibetan scholars ordered to take part in the re-education exercise, which includes teaching the official version of Tibetan history.

Re-education teams are usually composed of junior or middle ranking party members, and the use of senior Tibetan cadres and scholars suggests an attempt to get leading Tibetans to incriminate themselves by high profile involvement in the controversial campaign.

Another work team is scheduled to move into the Jokhang, the main Temple in Tibet, later this month.

Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, this week published a cheerful account of Tibetan monks who have left monasteries and become laymen, a new theme in Chinese propaganda. "Our living conditions are now much better than before," a former Tashilhunpo monk was quoted as saying on 8th August. "Our new generation will go to colleges and see the outside world. Now we truly feel that we all have a future," said the former monk, who now lives in a village 20km east of Shigatse.