World Tibet Network News Thursday, February 26, 1998

BEIJING, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Three U.S. clerics on a landmark visit to China have toured a Tibetan prison where about 100 defrocked monks and nuns are being held, the Xinhua news agency said on Thursday.

The religious leaders, appointed by U.S. President Bill Clinton, were only able to talk to two former nuns during their one-hour tour on Wednesday, Xinhua said.

The news agency quoted the prison warden, Norbu, as having dismissed

foreign reports of ill-treatment in Tibetan prisons when the subject was brought up by Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of the Roman Catholic

Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey.

"Norbu said that the stories are, after all, stories and he suggested that the American guests see the prison for themselves," Xinhua reported.

"He said that so long as they obey the regulations of the prison, the

prisoners have freedom of belief in religion," Xinhua said without

elaborating.

The clerics are on an unprecedented three-week tour of China aimed at

starting a dialogue on religious freedom with the communist country.

Western human rights group have accused China of seeking to destroy Tibetan religion and culture. They say many Tibetan monks have been jailed and tortured for supporting Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

Chinese leaders have rejected the criticism, saying the Himalayan region has prospered under Chinese rule and comparing Beijing's action against feudal serfdom in Tibet to the emancipation of black slaves during the U.S. civil war.

One inmate, Gaisang Zholma, told the American visitors she used to belong to a nunnery in a suburban county of Lhasa and that she was jailed for four years for harming state security, Xinhua said without elaborating. Tibetan monks and nuns are defrocked when jailed.

Xinhua painted a picture of an immaculate prison.

"In a tidy classroom, scores of inmates were attending classes taught by a Tibetan teacher," the report said.

The visitors toured cells of inmates, a recreation room, a workshop and a classroom building, it added.

"In the workshop of the prison, scores of inmates were weaving blankets, with some humming popular songs."

On Wednesday, Fides, an independent Vatican news agency, said the U.S.

clerics' visit risked being fruitless because many underground Chinese

Catholics were under police control and being forcibly prevented from

meeting the visitors.

Beijing has cracked down on worship outside official religious circles, and millions risk police hounding or arrest by attending makeshift "house churches" in private homes.

China officially puts its number of Roman Catholics at four million, but Church organisations say as many as eight million Catholics meet

underground.

The U.S. clerics, including Rabbi Arthur Shneier and Reverend Don Argue, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, are on a three-week visit and are due to return to the United States on Sunday. They arrived in Tibet on Monday.

The visitors have met Chinese President Jiang Zemin and last week handed their hosts a list of 30 believers reported to have been jailed in China. They asked about the welfare of the prisoners and for details of charges against them.

Last week, the Connecticut-based Catholic group, the Cardinal Kung

Foundation, accused authorities in the northern Chinese province of Hebei of killing or jailing dozens of underground Catholics since 1991 and said there was no religious freedom in China.