Authorities admit "education campaign" underway in Tibetan monsteries (ADDS official reaction, denial of "purge" report) - by Jorge Svartzman

BEIJING, Aug 16 (AFP) - Tibetan authorities admitted Friday that an "education campaign" is underway in monasteries there but denied a report that they were forcing monks to subsribe to Beijing's political line.

"The government of the autonomous region of Tibet has decided to launch a patriotic education campaign in the temples," an official from Lhasa's external affairs bureau, who identified himself as "Mr. Qiu," said by telephone.

The campaign is intended "to instill love of the party and love of the religion."

The campaign was launched to ensure monks respect the law "in the temples, some of which since the 1980s have become dens of illegal activities by some lamas looking to spread separatist sentiments," he said.

Qiu denied a report by the London-based Tibet Information Network (TIN) that officials in charge of the campaign demanded more than 1,000 monks sign declarations of political allegiance or face expulsion from their monasteries.

The organisation, quoting a monk who fled to India last week, said "dozens of other monks had left the monasteries and were on their way to India to avoid having to "sign a statement against His Holiness" the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

"This organisation has a habit of spreading this type of rumour," Qiu said. "It's not a question of expelling the lamas, who are free to pursue their religious activities within the law."

According to Qiu, the three monasteries which are the focus of the "education campaign" are Jokhang and Drepung, near Lhasa, and Ganden, 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the capital.

TIN mentioned Ganden and Drepung, but not Jokhang. The organisation said another monastery near Lhasa, Sera, was also a target for the communist authorities.

In July, the Chinese-appointed president of the Tibetan autonomous region, Gyaincain Norbu, said "the struggle against separatism is through education and the assertion of order in the temples."

Tibet's high court president recently said the "strike hard" crackdown on crime, which has been in force in China since April, was aimed at "the extermination of bad elements," including "separatists" in the region.

The statements followed an incident in May at the Ganden monastery where monks refused to obey an order to remove portraits of the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, went into exile in 1959, after the bloody suppression of an anti-Chinese uprising.