Beijing - China has announced plans to strengthen its
'patriotic education' campaign in Tibetan monasteries as it seeks to
crack down on unrest in the region amid conflicting claims by Chinese
and exile Tibetans about the extent of arrests being made.
After Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu said from Tibet that
China would step up the programme while castigating monks for
undermining Chinese solidarity, government religious studies
professors said Wednesday in Beijing that the campaign was aimed at
guarding against 'infiltration attempts' by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's
spiritual leader, and other exiled Tibetans.
Meanwhile, a group of 26 foreign journalists departed for Lhasa,
Tibet's capital, on a government-organized trip as China faces
criticism for obstructing press freedom for barring foreign
correspondents from Tibet and Tibetan areas where unrest has
occurred.
The journalists arrived in a city that has seen a 12-day blockade
of food and water to major monasteries by Chinese authorities, an
exile group said, adding that one monk has died as a result.
Monk Thokmey died Monday in the Ramoche monastery of starvation,
according to the exiled Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy
(TCHRD). The Chinese military have not been allowing food and water
into the monastery since March 14 and fires tear gas into it
frequently, the group said, citing reliable sources.
Many monasteries in Tibet are facing shortages of food, water,
medicine as well as restrictions on movement, it added.
In Beijing, Professor Dramdul, director of the Institute of
Religion Studies for State Council, China's cabinet, said a
decadelong ideological instruction of monks in Tibet had resulted in
increasing patriotism among the Tibetan Buddhist clergy and denied it
was political indoctrination.
Chinese authorities have said peace has returned to Lhasa after
anti-China demonstrations that began March 10, the 49th anniversary
of a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, escalated into
deadly riots four days later.
Chinese police on Wednesday released a list of 53 Tibetans who are
being sought in the violent unrest that broke out there and have
issued arrest warrants for 29 people, the official news agency Xinhua
reported.
As of Wednesday, by Chinese accounts, some 660 persons who had
taken part in the two weeks of protests in Lhasa and other Tibetan
areas had turned themselves over to the authorities. In Lhasa alone
the number was 280 people who had surrendered to police in the
Tibetan capital for involvement in the anti-China riots, Xinhua said.
But the TCHRD, speaking of a 'wave of purges,' said that more than
1,200 Tibetans had been arrested, and 100 persons had disappeared.
The group expressed its fears that those arrested faced 'torture
and the most extreme inhumane treatment' in having admissions and
other information forced from them.
The Chinese government has said 19 Chinese were killed in the
violence in Lhasa, but the India-based Tibetan government in exile
said it confirmed the deaths of about 140 people there, many of them
Tibetans shot by Chinese police.
The protests and violence has since spread into neighbouring
Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu provinces.
China's ban on foreign journalists travelling to the protest areas
has made it difficult to verify information, and the Foreign
Correspondents Club of China criticized the government as failing to
live up to its promises to allow free reporting that it made as part
of its bid for this year's Summer Olympics.
Its criticism came on the start of the government-organized,
three-day trip to Lhasa for 26 reporters from 19 media organizations,
including the Associated Press, the Financial Times and Hong Kong's
South China Morning Post.
The group left Beijing Wednesday, but the Foreign Correspondents
Club criticized the 'brief, tightly managed trip' as falling 'far
short of fulfilling China's promise, made during its bid for the 2008
Olympic Games, of free media reporting.'
The club called on China to allow the group to report freely and
to immediately allow all other foreign journalists reporting on Tibet
and Tibetan areas to work and travel without government interference.
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
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