Chinese authorities have launched a campaign to shame and scare Tibetan children into abandoning open expressions of their Buddhist faith, a London-based monitoring group said yesterday.
Children aged between seven and 13 in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa are being told that Tibetan Buddhist practices equal "backward behavior," the Tibet Information Network (TIN) said.
In some schools, children have been given detention or forced to pay fines if they failed to observe a ban on wearing traditional Buddhist talismans, according to TIN.
"The pupils' natural inclination toward religious belief and their habits of spiritual faith inculcated by their parents ... have been attacked and banned," TIN quoted a resident of Lhasa as saying.
In some schools talismans collected from pupils by the school authorities or teachers were cut to pieces or burned in front of the class, according to TIN.
Schoolchildren who wear talismans have been threatened with expulsion or penalties such as being "named and shamed" in front of the entire school or having marks deducted from their exam results, TIN said.
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