Published by: World Tibet Network News, Sunday - June 22, 1997

BEIJING, June 22 (AP) -- A court in Tibet has convicted 14 monks in connection with a violent protest last May against a Chinese ban on pictures of the Dalai Lama, the region's exiled leader, a monitoring group said Sunday.

The convictions were included in a report by the Tibet Daily newspaper on court activity last year, according to the Tibet Information Network, based in London. The newspaper did not say when the monks were convicted or what sentences they received.

At least one monk was reported shot and wounded by police who opened fire at the stone-throwing protesters at Ganden Monastery, 25 miles east of Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

The monks were convicted of inciting other Buddhist monks to shout reactionary slogans, organizing illegal demonstrations, smashing up a police station and _stubbornly following the Dalai clique," the Tibet Information Network said.

The protest erupted after Beijing last April banned displays of photos of the Dalai Lama at monasteries and temples. The Dalai Lama went into exile in 1959 amid a failed uprising, and his photographs are venerated by Tibetans.

Chinese authorities are reported to have conducted house-to-house searches to enforce the ban, which provoked some of the most violent protests in the region in several years.

Independence sentiment among the Tibetan Buddhist clergy and their Tibetan followers remains strong after 47 years of often brutal Chinese rule in the Himalayan region.

The Tibet Daily also said 98 people were tried on charges of endangering state security last year in Tibet, according to the Tibet Information Network. The charge is used for offenses previously described as counter-revolutionary.