TAR Party Secretary Calls for Tighter Control of Tibetan Monasteries, Nunneries

June 30, 2006

Zhang Qingli, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) Communist Party Secretary, told senior Party officials meeting in Lhasa on May 16 that the Party is engaged in a "fight to the death struggle" against the Dalai Lama and his supporters, according to a Tibet Daily report published the same day (in Chinese, reprinted on the Web site of Xinhua). For this reason, Zhang said, the Party must push ahead with the patriotic education campaign already underway in TAR Buddhist monasteries and nunneries, the report said. Zhang called on provincial Party and government officials to widen the patriotic education campaign to include a broader population, and to intensify the "rectification" and restructuring of each monastery and nunnery's Democratic Management Committee (DMC). Monks or nuns who administer a monastery or nunnery form the DMCs. DMC members must implement Party policies on religion and ensure that monks and nuns obey government regulations on religious practice.

Zhang Qingli, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) Communist Party Secretary, told senior Party officials meeting in Lhasa on May 16 that the Party is engaged in a "fight to the death struggle" against the Dalai Lama and his supporters, according to a Tibet Daily report published the same day (in Chinese, reprinted on the Web site of Xinhua). For this reason, Zhang said, the Party must push ahead with the patriotic education campaign already underway in TAR Buddhist monasteries and nunneries, the report said. Zhang called on provincial Party and government officials to widen the patriotic education campaign to include a broader population, and to intensify the "rectification" and restructuring of each monastery and nunnery's Democratic Management Committee (DMC). Monks or nuns who administer a monastery or nunnery form the DMCs. DMC members must implement Party policies on religion and ensure that monks and nuns obey government regulations on religious practice.

Zhang told the Party officials, some of whom also hold senior positions in the TAR government and people's congress, that comprehensive implementation of the Regulation on Religious Affairs (issued July 2004, effective March 2005, translation available on the Web site of China Elections and Governance) will lead to the "normalization of religious order" and the "standardization of religious activity," according to the Tibet Daily report. Tibetans inside and outside China regard the Dalai Lama as their spiritual leader, but Zhang described the Dalai Lama as "the biggest obstacle hindering Tibetan Buddhism from establishing normal order."

Li Guangwen, Executive Vice Chairman of the TAR People's Congress Standing Committee, stressed at a meeting of Standing Committee members "the need to step up legislative work in the area of the anti-separatism struggle and the management of religious affairs," according to a June 10 Singtao Daily report (translated in OSC, 11 June 06) that said the meeting took place a few days earlier. Standing Committee Vice Chairmen Zhao Lian and Bai Zhao also said that the Dalai Lama intends to "reject the autonomy system in minority regions, restore his rule in Tibet, and once again condemn the Tibetan people to slavery." Areas of ethnic autonomy are established under Article 4 and Chapter III of the Chinese Constitution, and are subject to the provisions of the Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law. The Singtao Daily report took note of the timing of the meeting, saying that, "Just as the Dalai Lama keeps extending olive branches to Beijing to signal his desire to come home after spending many years living in exile overseas, the standing committee . . . held a special meeting in Lhasa a few days ago to 'expose and criticize the crime of the Dalai Lama's separatist political group.'"

Expressions of resentment by Tibetan monks and nuns in the Lhasa area against the campaign of "patriotic education" resulted in detentions and expulsions, and an apparent suicide in 2005. Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns constituted 21 of the 23 known political detentions of Tibetans by Chinese authorities in 2005, compared to 8 of the 15 such detentions known in 2004, based on data available in the CECC Political Prisoner Database (PPD). Few details are available about the continuing campaign in 2006 or the response of Tibetan monks and nuns to it.

The Party Central Committee appointed Zhang Qingli to the post of acting TAR Party Secretary in November 2005, and Secretary on May 29, 2006, according to a Xinhua report the same day. Zhang previously served as Deputy Party Secretary in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, an area where the government and Party implement repressive policies toward ethnic Uighurs.