Published by: World Tibet Network News Tuesday, November 18, 1997

BEIJING, Nov 17 (AFP) - Chinese authorities in Tibet have signalled a campaign to root out "hidden reactionaries" in the region, the Tibet Information Network said in a fax seen here Monday.

The London-based watchdog quoted a recent speech by China's top leader in Tibet as warning that the region was under threat from a new category of "hostile force" -- leading Tibetan figures who appear loyal to the Chinese regime but are secretly sympathetic to the Dalai Lama.

"A small handful of dangerous elements who have passed themselves off as upright persons with an ulterior motive have mingled among us," Tibet Communist Party Secretary Chen Kuiyuan said in a speech broadcast last Sunday.

The public accusation will alarm the community of so-called "patriotic personalities," mostly high-ranking lamas and scholars, who have rarely been publicly targeted in the past.

Chen singled out Chadrel Rinpoche, the former abbot of the Tashilhunpo monastery in Shigatse, as a model "behind-the-scenes sympathiser" of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader who heads a Tibetan government-in-exile in India.

"There are certain individuals such as (Chadrel) who were trusted by ... the party and the government for many years but rebelled against the party and the country at a crucial moment, stabbing the party in the back," Chen said.

He warned that Chadrel Rinpoche was "not an isolated case in our ranks." The former abbot leaked information to the Dalai Lama in 1995 about China's plans to choose a boy said to be a reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibet's second-highest religious figure.

The move prompted the Dalai Lama to announce his own choice, causing a religious furore in the Himalayan region over which boy candidate was the true Panchen Lama.

Chadrel Rinpoche was sentenced in May to six years in prison for betraying state secrets and conspiring to split China.

Chen's speech also contained a fierce denial of changes in the region's leadership, which the Tibet Information Network described as evidence of division.

"At present, some people are spreading a rumour that ... leading members of the regional party committee will leave Tibet," the ethnic-Chinese official said. "This is a totally groundless rumour."

The network said such unprovoked statements acknowledging or denying internal conflict in China are "extremely rare" and indicate a split among the leaders.

Chinese troops took control of Tibet in 1951 and the Dalai Lama fled into exile eight years later following a failed uprising against Beijing's rule.