Home
Reports
“3/14”, the new TAR party secretary, a “last ditch-struggle” and “the heads of
monks and nuns”.
[TIN] Update, Wednesday, May 31, 2006
After a winter characterised by strong Tibetan religious fervour and
demonstrations of loyalty to the Dalai Lama, Beijing has sent a firm warning
that any further politically undesirable Buddhist activities will not be
tolerated, and appealed to local authorities to remain vigilant of the
“international anti-China forces” and the “Dalai clique”. As well as
innumerable occurrences of fur burning, following the Dalai Lama’s appeal not
to use wildlife skins, the destruction on 14 March 2006 in Ganden Monastery of
a statue of Dorje Shugden, was the climax of the season. Shugden is a deity
whose cult the Dalai Lama discourages, but the Chinese authorities, for their
own reasons, effectively encourage. It is this incident which was explicitly
referred to during a conference of leading regional cadres of the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) held on the 15 and 16 May 2006 by the Tibet Autonomous
Region (TAR) Party Committee. Though unambiguous, Tibetan gestures of deference
to the Dalai Lama are nothing new, the recent audacity of these gestures, and
the resulting media attention, appears to be raising anxiety levels amongst the
Chinese leadership. Such attention could not come at a worse time for the
authorities, coming as it does just a few weeks before the opening of the
Beijing-Lhasa railway when Tibet is likely to come under the full glare of the
international media. Zhang Qingli, who headed the conference in his position as
acting secretary of the TAR party committee, was promoted to full-fledged
secretary of the TAR party committee on 30 May 2006, half a year after his
arrival in the province. Zhang, replaces Yang Chuantang, and, like CCP
secretary Hu Jintao, was a member of the Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Youth League. Zhang also served in Xinjiang, giving him valuable
experience of working in ‘remote’ and ‘troublesome’ regions.
New details on the Ganden incident
On 14 March 2006, monks in Ganden, the main seat of the dominant Gelugpa school
of Tibetan Buddhism, reportedly destroyed a statue of Shugden, a protective
deity linked to sectarian tendencies among the Gelugpa. Since 1996
particularly, the Dalai Lama has repeatedly expressed his disapproval of the
Shugden cult. A fight between monks led to the intervention of the security
forces and the arrest of several monks. The official Chinese news agency Xinhua
appears to have been the first to report the incident, a few weeks after its
actual occurrence, and presented it as “a case of disrespect of religious
freedom by the Dalai Lama”.
Despite many, often contradictory rumours circulating, few details have leaked
out about the incident. However, it can be confirmed with a high level of
probability that 17 of the monks who had been arrested following the incident
have been released after signing a statement acknowledging their 'crime' and
agreeing to pay compensation for the “damage done“. This is likely to mean
financing the reconstruction of the Shugden statue that they destroyed. Since
most of the monks have no personal money, their families are said to have
agreed to act as guarantors or to provide the funds themselves.
Although the incident occurred at Ganden monastery and primarily concerned
Ganden monks, sources state that monks from two other monasteries were
involved. One is said to be Rato Monastery. Rato is situated to the west of
Lhasa, close to Nyethang and Chushul. Rato is Gelugpa, but originally adhered
to the Kagyupa school of Tibetan Buddhism. The monastery has a reputation as a
centre for Buddhist dialectics, and during the winter months, Rato is a meeting
point for many monks from other monasteries who come to study the subject.
There are contradictory reports as to which monastery was the third one
involved in the disturbances.
While the incident might be linked to religious infatuation at the climax of the
fur burning movement throughout Tibet, it also reflects a reaction to the
continuous pressures monks from the Gelugpa school are subjected to in order to
make them publicly side against the Dalai Lama in the Shugden issue. In Autumn
2005, for example, the monastery of Labrang (Chin: Xiahe; Gansu province)
received an unsolicited, proposal from Gangchen Rinpoche, a prominent supporter
of the Shugden cult residing in Italy, to fund the construction of a new
dormitory for the monks. The proposal was accompanied by generous personal
donations to the monks. However, the funding proposal was conditional. In order
for it to happen, the monastery would have had to agree to the construction of
a Shugden shrine within the monastery, similar to the one in Ganden. Following
a meeting of the monks, and despite the pressure exerted by the local
authorities supervising religious affairs, the proposal was finally refused.
Regulations on religion to “enter the heads of monks and nuns”.
According to a report in the Tibet Daily of 17 May 2006, the meeting of 15 and
16 May was held in order “to discuss and draw up a plan on the specific issue
of fighting against splittism”. However, rather than set up new policies, it
emphasised the “in-depth” implementation of existing ones, the implementation
of “the spirit of the Central Party's instructions” and the necessity “to
analyse correctly the current situation of Tibet”, (meaning the TAR), in order
to secure the development of its economy “by leaps and bounds, and run the
country in permanent safety”. The events in Ganden, labelled by the
authorities, “The 3/14 Ganden incident”, were extensively reported to the
conference by the deputy secretary of the TAR Party Committee, Thubten Tsewang,
one of the three politically highest ranking Tibetans currently in the TAR. The
two others, Jampa Phuntsog (Chin: Qiangpa Puntso), chairman of TAR government,
and Leqcog, chairman of the TAR Congress, “passed on the Central [Party]'s
instructions”, and gave the concluding speech at the end of the conference.
The key speech however, was delivered by the Chinese Zhang Qingli, at that point
still the acting Secretary of the TAR Party Committee. Zhang emphasised the
perceived necessity to deepen “understanding of the grim situation of Tibet's
present stability”. He also urged conference members to “earnestly awaken and
galvanize people into action”. Zhang also pointed out “due to special political
and historical reasons”, the TAR is the focus of China’s fight against the
“Dalai clique and the hostile forces of the West”. Those, said Zhang, have in
recent times “continuously created some incidents” in the region, and
“carefully calculated plots to carry out their splitting activities”. The
“hostile forces of the West”, according to Zhang, have “stirred up the Dalai
clique to put up a last-ditch struggle”. Zhang declared, without further
elaborating, that “host of facts” show that the Dalai is the “commander in
chief of the splittist political clique plotting 'Tibet's independence’”, a
“true instrument of the international anti-China forces” and “the main cause of
social upheaval in Tibet”.
Zhang Qingli reminded the conference that the struggle against the Dalai Lama is
“a struggle of life and death”. He said “patriotiotic education” needs to be
“resolutely and vigorously carried out” in the monasteries, and their
‘democratic administration committees’, (government organs based in most
monasteries and through which the authorities exert internal control of
religious institutions), “overhauled and consolidated”. It must be ensured that
“the power of authority (...) is firmly in the hands of religious personnel who
are patriotic and love religion”, that the 'Regulations on Religious Affairs'
be implemented, and that the constitution and the law “enter into the
monasteries” (...) and “enter into the heads of the monks and nuns”.
Back to Archived Reports List