AP-Armed police have rousted hundreds of Tibetan nuns, some monks and Buddhist scholars from a nunnery and monastic institute in western China, razing their homes and threatening them with arrest if they return, a monitoring group said on Monday.
Some of those thrown out of the Serthar Buddhist Institute and Nunnery in Sichuan province, just east of Tibet, were reportedly forced to sign documents denouncing the Dalai Lama, their spiritual leader, and promising not to return, according to the Tibet Information Network.
The London-based group called the expulsions part of a systematic clearing-out of Serthar on orders from provincial authorities and the central government in Beijing. The reason was not immediately clear, though China's government often views centres of Tibetan Buddhism as potential stewpots of opposition to Beijing's 51-year rule over Tibet.
The ethnically mixed institute, also known as Larung Gar and - in Chinese - as Wumin, is a Buddhist academy in Sichuan's Ganzi Prefecture. Both the Tibet Information Network and the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile in India describe it as staunchly non-political.
The Information Network's Web site showed a picture of wreckage it said was a demolished home at Serthar. It said the woman in the picture ''appears to be a nun collecting belongings from the wreckage''.
Police in Sida County, where the nunnery and institute is located, refused to answer questions on Monday when contacted by The Associated Press. But a police official in adjacent Ganzi County, who gave his name only as Mr Gao, said he had heard of nuns and monks being forced to leave Sida.
No such expulsions have taken place in Ganzi County, Mr Gao said.
The Information Network, quoting a source it identified as a monk now in exile, said many monks and nuns were deeply depressed and had threatened to commit suicide rather than leave.
The expulsions are scheduled to be completed by October, the group said. It said more than 1,000 dwellings had been destroyed since mid-June. Roads leading to the institute were blocked and the site was sealed off before demolition began, it said.
More than 6,000 monks, nuns and students were believed to live at Serthar before the expulsions began.
In June, the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile in Dharmsala, India, said the monk who headed the institute, Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok, 68, had been detained and some expulsions had begun. At the time, a spokesman for the Dalai Lama called such activity ''very strange'' because Phuntsok was involved in no political activity.
''Even some Chinese officials are said to have acknowledged that Serthar is a 'patriotic' institution,'' the Tibet Information Network said. It linked the expulsions to the ethnic diversity of Serthar's nuns and monks - and the Chinese government's fear that a wider sphere of its citizenry could be exposed to Tibetan Buddhism.
According to the Dalai Lama's officials in India, Chinese officials from 13 nearby districts visited the institute in the spring and ordered its population be reduced to 1,500. The officials claimed to be acting on orders from Beijing and Sichuan's provincial government. The action was at the behest of President Jiang Zemin, the Dalai Lama's statement said.
The Tibet Information Network said on Monday that Phuntsok was ill and weakened by the expulsions and by government pressure to secure his help. His whereabouts on Monday were not known.
Phuntsok founded the institute in 1980 as a personal hermitage. Although not officially a monastery, it became home to thousands of monks and nuns who built their own accommodations as they arrived.
The Dalai Lama founded the Tibetan government-in-exile in 1960, a year after he fled Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. Chinese troops occupied Tibet in 1950, taking control the region Beijing says has been a part of China for centuries.