Published by: World Tibet Network News Wednesday - September 10, 1997

BEIJING, Sept 10 (Reuter) - A Tibetan Buddhist abbot, jailed for six years for his contacts with the exiled Dalai Lama, has been held in solitary confinement in a remote prison in southwestern China, a human rights group said on Wednesday.

Chadrel Rinpoche, 58, had staged a hunger strike in his cell in the Chuandong No 3 Prison in Dazu county in Sichuan province to protest against the poor conditions, the New York-based Human Rights in China said.

"It is not known whether he is eating now, but sources have reported that his health is very poor," the group said.

The former abbot of the sprawling Tashilunpo monastery in Xigaze in southern Tibet is the most prominent Tibetan monk now serving jail terms for what China views as their campaign for independence for the deeply devout Himalayan region.

Officials in Tibet recently told a group of visiting German parliamentarians that 200 monks were serving terms in Tibetan jails for violating national security laws -- or campaigning against Chinese rule.

Chadrel Rinpoche was sentenced last April to six years in jail for conspiring to split China and for leaking state secrets after he notified Tibet's god-king the Dalai Lama of the progress of his team in their search for the reincarnation of Tibet's second holiest monk, the Panchen Lama.

The Dalai Lama's decision to announce from his home in exile in India the identity of a six-year-old boy selected as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama sent China into a rage.

Beijing pulled that boy out of the race, arrested Chadrel Rinpoche and announced its own choice, six-year-old Gyaincain Norbu, as the 11th Panchen Lama.

China is eager to maintain a tight grip on Tibet, which has been rocked in the last decade by a string of often violent protests against Chinese rule, most of them led by Tibetan monks and nuns.

Many of those monks and nuns have been sentenced to long prison terms.

Chadrel Rinpoche was being held in solitary in a small, restricted compound within the Chauandong prison, where the late chairman Mao Zedong incarcerated his rightist rival, Hu Feng, for 20 years, Human Rights in China said.

Only three people were allowed into the abbot's compound -- two commissars who report directly to the Ministry of Justice in Beijing, and a prisoner who acts as a cook and guard to Chadrel Rinpoche and who is not permitted to leave.

The abbot had been denied all contact with the outside since his arrival at Chuandong prison and was not allowed to leave his cell for exercise, the report said.

He had staged his hunger strike to protest against these conditions, Human Rights in China said.