World Tibet Network News Sunday, June 14, 1998

Web site: http://www.tibetinfo.net

TIN News Update / 11 June 1998 /

ISSN 1355-3313

A temple and monastic retreat have been demolished by the Chinese authorities in Tibet at a famous pilgrimage site on the outskirts of Lhasa, after officials ruled that the buildings had not received the correct permission from the authorities, according to tourists who have visited the site. Approximately 50 nuns, some of whom had lived there for up to ten years, and a Buddhist teacher with some of his followers were ordered to leave the site during the demolition work.

The religious buildings were pulled down at Drag Yerpa, 30 km north-east of Lhasa, in early April this year by local labourers acting under orders from the Taktse county government. The temple and the monastery surrounding it, which consisted of at least six separate buildings housing monks and nuns, were built since 1996 by the lama Adzom Pelo Rinpoche. There are unconfirmed reports that the hermitage cave complex of Samye Chimpu, one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Tibet, has also been destroyed, and TIN has received confirmation of the closure of three further monasteries and nunneries.

Adzom Pelo Rinpoche, a prominent teacher in the Nyingmapa school of Tibetan Buddhism with a large number of followers and students mainly from Gonjo in Kham, has reportedly been sent away from the Drag Yerpa area along with at least 50 nuns and an unknown number of monks who had been resident at the monastery.

The buildings constructed by Adzom Rinpoche were ruled to be unauthorised because they were not on the exact site of one of the historic temples or monasteries which existed before the Chinese took over the administration of Tibet in 1959. There are unconfirmed reports that officials in Tibet may withdraw permission for other religious buildings that have not been built on historic sites. According to sources in Tibet, the Chinese authorities are investigating several monasteries for signs of their historical origin. "Officials are asking people whether their monastery had been in existence for a long time and whether its name appeared in historical documents," said a Tibetan who is now in exile. "They need to know whether there is Chinese permission for the rebuilding of the monastery or not - if they establish that no permission was given, then they plan to destroy the building."

Adzom Rinpoche's temple is believed to have attracted particular disapproval because it was funded by a foreigner who once worked in the region, and who raised money from friends.

The lama, whose full name is Jigme Thubten Gyatso, comes from Kham, an eastern Tibetan area which is now part of the Chinese province of Sichuan. Monks from Kham are famous in Tibetan tradition for travelling to central Tibet to set up small monasteries and hermitages at historic sites, but since 1996 there have been reports that the Chinese authorities are now enforcing a policy of restricting admission to monasteries to local inhabitants only.

Photographs of the Drag Yerpa site show piles of rubble and the partial remains of stone walls, with religious statues, photographs of lamas and parts of shrines clearly visible among the debris, suggesting that the occupants were not given time to salvage their valuables before the demolition took place. The three major statues at the temple, images of the Buddha Sakyamuni, Avalokiteshvara and Padmasambhava which had been donated by foreigners, had also been abandoned. But according to the tourists, who asked not to be named, they have since been moved to another temple in Drag Yerpa which has been granted official permission.

Drag Yerpa, which is a day's walk from Lhasa, is a rural area famous for caves used for meditation by the 8th century Buddhist mystic Padmasambhava and his consort Yeshe Tsogyal, as well as by the 10th century scholar Atisha. The caves remained in use until 1959, when the area housed over 20 monasteries and temples erected by followers of both the Nyingmapa and Gelugpa schools of Tibetan Buddhism and was inhabited by some 300 monks and nuns.

After the Chinese authorities permitted religious activity to resume in the early 1980s a small monastery with some 15 monks was re-constructed at the site by members of the Gelugpa school, along with a series of small "lhakhangs" or temples, and 64 of the caves were re-adapted for use as hermitages by monks and nuns, mainly from the Nyingmapa school. The Drag Yerpa and Chimpu complexes are traditional sites for worship, and the individual Buddhist practitioners studying in each hermitage were part of an organised group.

Despite the completion of the demolition work and the expulsion of approximately 50 nuns from the religious site on 10 April, eleven elderly nuns are reported to be still living at Drag Yerpa. According to an unofficial source in Tibet, four nuns among the 50 said that if they were not allowed to stay, they would commit suicide. The Chinese authorities sent vehicles to the nuns' caves, which are protected from the outside by curtains of plastic. "They grabbed their hands, dragged them down from the caves and put them in the vehicles," said the source, a Tibetan whose name is known to TIN. The source also claimed that monks and nuns had been beaten for asking the Chinese authorities to let them stay in Samye Chimpu, a hermitage complex located near the top of a range of mountains approximately 16 km northeast of Samye, which is in Dranang county, south Tibet. The Chimpu cave complex, which housed about 100 monks and nuns before the recent

expulsions, was regarded as one of the most important hermitage sites in central Tibet. It is one of Guru Rinpoche's "Eight Supreme Sanctuaries", where the tantric master is said to have used his magical powers to exorcise Bon spirits and local demons.

The same source said that on 15 March, after they had been expelled from Samye Chimpu and Drag Yerpa, a large number of nuns and monks from the two religious sites went to Lhasa to do prostrations on the Lingkor, the sacred circuit of the capital city.

Five of the 15 Gelugpa monks at Drag Yerpa have been imprisoned since 1993 for political activities such as possession of a Tibetan flag or taking part in a demonstration, and three are still reported to be in custody. One of the Nyingmapa nuns, Thubten Yangzom, served two years in prison for taking part in a demonstration in 1993.

Nuns made to build road for patriotic education work team

A political re-education team spent two weeks at Drag Yerpa in December last year, but is reported to have demanded only a verbal agreement to a formal statement of loyalty; in most monasteries in the current patriotic education campaign - which is now in its third year - a written statement has been required from all monks and nuns.

None of the monks or nuns were allowed to leave the monastery before the

patriotic education campaign began, and before the work team arrived they

were made to carry out manual work to repair a road leading up to the

nunnery.

The Chinese authorities have always set limits on the number of monks and

religious buildings since religious construction was permitted again after

the Cultural Revolution twenty years ago, but these limits were not strictly

implemented until a major policy meeting in 1994 called for an end to the

practice of "wantonly building temples and lamaseries", which was listed as

an objective in the annual work reports of the Tibet Autonomous Region government in 1996 and 1997. The report on the 1994 meeting, known as the Third Forum on Work in Tibet, stated: "At present the number of monasteries, monks and nuns in our region are sufficient to fulfil the daily religious practice of the masses, and concerning this matter we should work patiently but not leave it unchecked".

Three further monasteries and nunneries have recently been closed by the Chinese authorities following re-education campaigns. According to the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), the Rakor (or Rago) nunnery, which is 12 km from Lhasa in Toelung Dechen county, was closed. The nunnery was shut down following the visit of a work team to conduct patriotic education sessions on 17 March last year. "All 80 nuns were expelled following their refusal to comply with the instructions of the work team, which arrived at the nunnery to conduct patriotic education sessions on 17 March 1997," stated the TCHRD in its report, "Closing the Doors: Religious Repression in Tibet" (22 May 1998).

Jonang Kumbum monastery, 61 km from Lhartse county town on the south bank of the Brahmaputra in western Tibet, has also been closed down in the past year following a patriotic education campaign. Seventeen of the monks were interrogated by the work team in their dormitories on whether they listened to broadcasts in the Tibetan language from India, whether they knew the "Dalai clique", and whether they had seen pictures of the Dalai Lama. A Tibetan who is now in exile said: "Monks were interrogated and threatened with pistols pointed at their heads, persuading them to criticise the Dalai clique." According to unconfirmed reports, the Shongchen nunnery in Shigatse prefecture has been demolished after functioning as a nunnery for four years. The Chinese authorities are said to have given the order for the nunnery to be demolished in September 1996. It had been built by local people and nuns and with donations from the village.

Since last November Chinese officials have argued that the number of reconstructed monasteries and temples now exceeds that of 1959. "Religion is experiencing a golden age in Tibet [the TAR], which has 1,781 lamaseries and temples, 300 more than before Tibet was peacefully liberated in 1951", reported Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency on 8 August last year. However according to an internal document recently published by TIN, there were "2,500 large medium and small monasteries in Tibet" before 1959. The 70,000 Character Petition of the Panchen Lama, written in 1962, also states that 97% of these monasteries were destroyed following the 1959 uprising.

Further monastery and nunnery closures

An announcement by the authorities three years ago that hermits at Chimpu and Drag Yerpa would have to pay a tax was interpreted by some Tibetans to be a method of forcing many of the hermits to leave the cave retreats. According to nuns who once lived in the Samye area, a monthly land tax of 5 yuan (nearly $1) was collected from each nun and monk in the region from September 1996. The authorities also warned monks and nuns that the tax would be increased for those who came from outside the local area, and in February 1997 a registration system was set up for monks and nuns living in caves in the temple complex. In the Chimpu hermitage, the authorities are said to have given individual monks' and nuns' caves "door" numbers for registration purposes.

The expulsion of the hermit monks and nuns from both religious sites has also been mentioned in a letter to the United Nations which was brought out of Tibet last month and signed from "people of three provinces of Tibet", referring to the three traditional areas of Tibet, U-Tsang (now incorporated within the TAR), Kham and Amdo. The letter, which was addressed to the five permanent members of the UN (Security Council), including China, the Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan and "all who are working hard with clear intention" states that: "The hermits at Drag Yerpa and Samye Chimpu hermitage were expelled. The monks' and hermits' quarters and prayer hall [at both sites] were destroyed completely."