Atop a hill, a chain saw drowned out loudspeakers broadcasting a lama’s chants from a nearby temple.
The chain saw, wielded by workers demolishing a row of homes, signaled the imminent end of thousands of hand-built monastic dwellings at Larung Gar, the world’s largest Buddhist institute.
Since its founding in 1980, Larung Gar has grown into an extraordinary and surreal sprawl — countless red-painted dwellings surrounding temples, stupas and large prayer wheels. The homes are spread over the walls of this remote Tibetan valley like strawberry jam slathered on a scone.
Photo: AP /Ashwini Bhatia
Larung Gar has become one of the most influential institutions in the Tibetan world, the teachings of its senior monks praised, debated and proselytized from there to the Himalayas. In recent years, disciples have popularized a “10 new virtues” movement based on Buddhist beliefs, spreading its message across the region.
Now Chinese officials are tightening control over the settlement, in what many Tibetans and their advocates call a severe blow to Tibetan religious practice.
On a recent afternoon, workers in hard hats were dismantling cells that monks and nuns had built along a ridge. As they tossed aside wooden beams and plastic sheeting, nuns picked through rubble looking for their belongings. Men who appeared to be plainclothes police officers looked on from a bench across the street.
Hundreds of Buddhists had already been forced out of the area. A monk watching the destruction from a ledge told me he was staying in a home across the valley. Like others interviewed for this story, he spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal from the authorities.
“I heard my home will be demolished,” he said. “I don’t know whether I’ll be allowed to stay.”
FEAR, RESENTMENT
Tensions between Tibetans and the Chinese government have been high since a widespread uprising across the Tibetan plateau in 2008. Suppression of their culture and religious life remains at the heart of Tibetans’ grievances, and restrictions at important religious institutions like Larung Gar stoke that resentment.
Many Tibetans say they fear the erosion of their language, traditions and ways of worship. China still denounces the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, and bans his image throughout the region.
Some estimates put Larung Gar’s population at 20,000, many of them clergy who have flocked there from far corners of the vast plateau. Buddhist practitioners who are Han, the dominant ethnicity in China, live alongside Tibetans in the settlement, which is a winding 16-hour drive from the provincial capital, Chengdu.
Interviews with residents at Larung Gar and reports from Human Rights Watch, Radio Free Asia and overseas pro-Tibet groups indicate that officials intend to reduce the settlement’s population to 5,000 by late next year through mass evictions. During the summer, officials began deporting monks and nuns who were not registered residents of this area, Garze Prefecture of Sichuan province, which includes a large section of the traditional Tibetan area of Kham.
Tibetan users of WeChat,a popular Chinese social networking app, have said that those evicted must promise never to return. As of October, as many as 1,000 people had been forced out, residents and human rights groups said.
In June, an article on a state-run website quoted a local party official, Hua Ke, as saying that authorities were not driving away residents or destroying their quarters. Rather, he said, they were overhauling the crowded settlement “to eliminate hidden dangers and safeguard the personal safety and property of the monks and nuns.”
When the demolitions began this summer, officials closed the area to foreigners.
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