Published by World Tibet Network News - Sunday - July 6, 1997BEIJING, July 5 (AFP) - A Tibetan official has accused followers of the Dalai Lama of leading monks astray and influencing them to enjoy night life and pornography, said a regional daily seen here Saturday.
"The normal religious activities (in Tibet) have legal protection," said Raidi, deputy secretary of the Tibet regional committee of the Chinese communist party.
"But some monasteries and monks, under the influence of the reactionary thinking of the separatist clique of the Dalai Lama, have moved away from the religious path," Raidi told the Tibet Daily.
"Some monasteries do not look like monasteries any more. Some monks do not look like monks anymore. At night, they dress in Western clothes and go to karaoke bars," said Raidi, also president of the regional parliament.
He said some monks hid in their monastery cells hairpieces to conceal the tonsures required of the monks and nude pictures.
"The great mass of believers have reacted strongly to these practices far removed from religion, and have asked the government to tighten control and education" in the monasteries, the official said.
The government launched last year a "patriotic education campaign" over religious places and prohibited the display of portraits of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader.
Tibetan organizations in exile said the monks and the laity were forced to sign declarations of allegiance to Beijing, removing pictures of the 1989 Nobel Peace prize winner.
Another Tibetan official echoed recent calls of authorities to use the handover of Hongkong as a new weapon in the fight against the Dalai Lama.
"The return of Hong Kong should permit us ... to carry on until the end of the battle against the separatist clique of the Dalai Lama," Basang, who is also a deputy secretary of the regional Chinese party committee, told the newspaper.
Hong Kong was handed back to China on July 1 after 156 years of British rule.
The Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of the Tibetans, lives in exile in India since 1959. He is accused by Beijing of leading "splittist" forces against China.
