Tibetan exiles fear "purge" as China steps up campaign (2nd Roundup)

Mar 26, 2008, 14:35 GMT

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