BEIJING - Chinese authorities have forced thousands of Tibetan monks and nuns to leave a flourishing Buddhist academy in the western province of Sichuan, local officials said on Thursday.
Government officials ordered students at the Larung Temple Wumin Buddhist Academy to leave because of "concerns about social stability at the order of central authorities," an official at the provincial Religious Affairs Bureau told Reuters.
He declined to elaborate.
But the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) said in a statement authorities had tried several times to cut the number of students at the academy, which it said was the largest concentration of monks and nuns on the Tibetan plateau.
ICT said there were no reports of political or separatist activity at the academy, set up 10 years ago by a charismatic teacher named Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok.
However, it described the school as a "loose-knit community where students have to provide for themselves and are not under the formal control of any abbot" and one of the few places in the area providing a comprehensive Buddhist education.
China guarantees freedom of religion in its constitution but allows worship only through state-controlled religious bodies and maintains strict religious controls in Tibet to suppress loyalty to the region's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
The Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959, accuses Beijing of systematically destroying Tibetan religion and culture since Chinese troops over-ran the region in 1950.
BUILDINGS DESTROYED
The academy in Sertar county, near the borders of Tibet and Qinghai province, used to have some 8,000 monks and nuns, including 3,000 from the Han Chinese ethnic majority and members of other ethnic groups, one monk at the academy told Reuters.
Government officials asked thousands of them, both Tibetan and Chinese, to clear the compound but did not given a reason, said the monk, who declined to be named.
"Thousands of monks and nuns have already left," he said. "We heard that the government wanted to leave only 1,400 of us at the place."
"The government said it would tear down the houses after we leave."
Many of the monks and nuns were reluctant to go but there were no clashes with the authorities, he said.
A Sertar county official said the government was "cleaning up the place and putting things in order," but declined further comment.
Officials at the State Religious Affairs Bureau in Beijing said they were not aware of the issue.
ICT said Phuntsok, the academy's founder, had previously asked authorities to protect his students' right to freedom of religious belief.
Phuntsok also refused to ask his students to leave as they had come of their own accord, not at his invitation, ICT said.
06:48 06-21-01
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