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TIN News Update / 30 August, 1996 / total no of pages: 3 ISSN 1355-3313

Crackdown at Kumbum: School Closed, Monks Arrested, Magazine Banned

A 200-pupil school at Kumbum, one of Tibet's most important monasteries, has been closed down after pro-independence posters and leaflets appeared at the monastery, according to unofficial reports from the area. Up to 25 Tibetan students at the school were detained for some six weeks at Kumbum, the main Buddhist site in Qinghai, a province in north western China which includes the former eastern Tibetan region of Amdo.

One of the released students was in a coma when he was freed in April, apparently as a result of being tortured during questioning about the posters, and four of the detained monks are still in custody after five months, said the sources. A Tibetan poetry magazine produced by the four monks has been banned, and up to 100 monks expelled from the monastery, whose membership is limited to around 500.

The order to close the school was issued on 6th May this year by the Qinghai Provincial Government jointly with the local State Security and Public Security departments, according to unofficial sources in the area.

A highly publicised ceremony attended by over 100,000 people and officials was held at the monastery last week to mark the completion of a four year renovation project, whose major sponsors included the Chinese Government and the Hong Kong film magnate Run Run Shaw, according to a Xinhua report on 23rd August. Last month Li Ruihuan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party, visited Kumbum, called Ta'ersi by the Chinese, and praised its leaders "for helping safeguard the unification of the motherland and the unity between various Chinese nationalities", according to Xinhua on 25th July.

The school, known as the "Nga-rig Kye-tsel-ling" - literally, the Flourishing Garden of Five Knowledges - had been founded in Kumbum Monastery on 1st March 1990 by Agya Rinpoche, head of the monastery, to teach Tibetan literature and writing skills to novice monks when they first join the monastery. About half of the 200 monks at the school - probably those who had not been registered with the authorities as monks at Kumbum - were expelled from the monastery when the school was closed.

The 25 detainees from the school were taken into custody in the six weeks from mid-March to early May and held for questioning in connection with the pro-independence posters, which had first appeared in the monastery in October last year. All except four of the detainees were released on 5th May, the day before the closure order was issued, other than Jamyang Yeshe, a student monk who was said by supporters to have been released early for medical reasons on 2nd April, two weeks after his arrest. "He had been tortured so severely that he remained unconscious for some days after release," said the source, whose account could not be confirmed.

"The monks were warned not to tell anybody about their imprisonment, particularly not foreigners," commented the source, who said "both hard and soft tactics" had been used during the imprisonment of the student monks. "Because of these threats many of them don't dare to talk about what happened in prison in case they are expelled from the monastery or arrested again," added the source, who asked not to be named.

Four Monks: Wherabouts Unknown After "Laughter" Magazine Banned -

The four student monks who are still in custody - Damchoe Gyatso, Jigme Tendar, Phuntsog, and Damchoe Kalden - were taken from their quarters in the monastery by a squad of 13 police at midnight on 15th March. Three other Tibetans, including the brother of Damchoe Gyaltsen, who were staying in the monks' rooms at the time of the raid were also briefly detained by the police squad, apparently to deter them from spreading details of the arrests.

The four monks, whose present whereabouts are unknown, have been accused of producing both the pro-independence posters and leaflets containing prayers for the long life of the child recognised last year by the exiled Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama, whose birthplace is about 75 km from Kumbum.

The posters were signed by the "Kumbum Monastery Youth Group for Saving Tibet" and addressed to the "Lion Cubs of the Snowland", a poetic term for the youth of Tibet. The handwritten posters, of which a copy has been obtained by TIN, condemned China's intervention in the Panchen Lama succession. The writers promised to oppose any attempt to bring the "fake reincarnation" - the child named by the Chinese Government as the official reincarnation - to Kumbum, where the previous Panchen Lama had been enthroned.

"The Chinese Communists have claimed that Tibet belongs to China and that they have the right to recognise the reincarnation. They have just trampled on Tibetan Buddhism and on the Tibetan nationality," said the poster. "The government of the Red Chinese has shamelessly shown its devil's face," it said of China's interference in the succession. "All the monks and nuns of Kumbum monastery ... are continuously opposing the policies of China in Tibet - Youth of the Snowland, do not fear".

The four monks, who were all friends, were singled out because in December 1995, two months after the posters were put up, they had published an anthology of new Tibetan literature called "Laughter from the Tsongla Rang-mo" (tshong la ring mo'i dgod sgra), referring to a nearby mountain. The 52 page magazine, crudely reproduced by cyclostyle and consisting of some 20 hand-written love poems, prayers, riddles and short stories by local Tibetans, was originally printed with official approval, but has now been banned as "counter-revolutionary". Remaining copies have been withdrawn or destroyed, although the magazine contains no overt political reference apart from a short note on the last page.

"Brothers and sisters, who stand at the edge of cliff holding hands together," says the note, which is signed by the editors. "We have compiled this in memory of our ancestors, who have written their history in blood so that progress might be made in our literature. ... We have written this out of our love for the snow mountains."

Damchoe Gyatso, 27 years old, was the principal editor of the magazine, and contributed a short and conventional poem to it in praise of Yungchen Lhamo, the goddess of music. He is from Markham village in Gomang xiang, on Guinan county, Hainan prefecture in Qinghai. Damchoe, whose mother and father are called Jinpa and Khamkyi respectively, became a monk in the village monastery of Markham at the age of 15. In 1994, when he was 25 years old, he was arrested by Chinese soldiers at the Tibet-Nepal border, some 2,000 km west of Kumbum, during a failed attempted to escape to India. He was badly beaten by police before being returned to Qinghai, where he enrolled as a student at Nga-rig Kye-tsel-ling.

Jigme Tendar, 29 years old, comes from Ditsa village of Thargya xiang, in Hualong county, Haidong Prefecture, Qinghai. Said to have a good knowledge of Chinese, he became a monk at Kumbum in 1995, where he studied Tibetan medicine and literature. He had previously studied at Ditsa monastery and at Labrang Tashikyil monastery in Gansu.

Damchoe Kalden, 31 years old and Phuntsok, 25 years old, are both from the village of Vigya-laka [be'u rgya la ka], also in Thargya xiang in Hualong county. Damchoe Kalden was a monk at Vigya-laka monastery until he joined Kumbum last year to study Tibetan medicine. Phuntsog had been the chant-master at the same monastery before he became a monk at Kumbum.

Since the arrests rules at Kumbum are said to have been tightened to prevent visitors from staying overnight with monks and police are said to have increased night-time patrols and house searches.

Kumbum, one of the most important monasteries in Tibet, founded in 1560, is regarded as a national monument in China. It is situated in Huangzhong County, 26 km south west of Xining, the capital of Qinghai province, where it is a major tourist centre for Chinese as well as foreign visitors. The monastery was closed by the Chinese authorities and turned into an agricultural commune for 21 years until it was re-opened in 1979, since when the state has spent 37 million yuan (2.8 mln) on reconstruction. A further three million Hong Kong dollars (0.25 mln) was raised by Agya Rinpoche from Run Run Shaw, according to Xinhua.

Note: photographs of the detained monks and texts of the magazine are available from TIN.