HVK Archives: China shuts down Buddhist monastery, nunnery in Tibet
China shuts down Buddhist monastery, nunnery in Tibet - (no publication)
The Times of India
()
January 30, 1999
Title: China shuts down Buddhist monastery, nunnery in Tibet
Author: The Times of India
Publication:
Date: January 30, 1999
Chinese authorities have closed a 700-year-old Buddhist
monastery and an 800-year-old nunnery in Tibet after the clergy
rebuffed orders to denounce the Dalai Lama, a monitoring group
has reported.
All but three of 82 nuns at the Rakhor nunnery, one of Tibet's
oldest, were ordered to leave on November 20,1997, and by last
August all of the nunnery except its main assembly hall had been
destroyed, the London-based Tibet Information Network (TIN) said
on Thursday.
The Jonang Kumbum monastery, meanwhile, was closed and monks
sent home in July 1997 after they refused to accept conditions
laid down by teams of officials who ordered them to denounce the
Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, TIN said.
"China has sent such patriotic education" teams to many Tibetan
monasteries to stamp out support for the Dalai Lama, whom many
Tibetans still revere despite his flight into exile in India
after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.
Monks at the monastery in Xigaze prefecture, southwest of the
Tibetan capital, Lhasa, also were made to denounce a boy chosen
by the Dalai Lama as a senior spiritual leader and to instead
accept another boy chosen by China, TIN said.
"Monks were individually interrogated and forced to accept the
terms at the risk of their lives," TIN quoted an unidentified
source now in exile as saying. After failing to abide by their
orders, the officials announced the monastery's closure. TIN
said. A monk, Yonten Gyatso, also was arrested and his
whereabouts are unknown, it added.
"Nuns at the Rakhor nunnery remained silent during a question
and-answer session with officials and Left patriotic education"
examination papers blank, TIN said.
Authorities later dispatched troops to the nunnery, northwest of
Lhasa. and finally ordered nuns to leave, it said. By January
1998, no nuns remained, it said. Two senior nuns, identified by
TIN as Palden and Kelsang. were arrested in November 1997 and it
is not known whether they have since been released, it said.
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