Rights groups yesterday called for Chinese authorities to stop forced demolitions at one of the world’s biggest Tibetan Buddhist institutes, saying the move was an attempt to “severely restrict” religious freedoms.
Authorities began destroying living quarters at Larung Gar Institute in Sichuan Province last week, according to a statement by the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT).
Last month, local government officials ordered the estimated 10,000 Buddhist monks and nuns living at the center, also known as Serthar, be cut to no more than 5,000, another overseas organisation, Free Tibet, said in an e-mail.
“These demolitions are part of a set of policy measures implemented by the Chinese government that severely restrict the religious freedom of Tibetan Buddhists,” ICT president Matteo Mecacci wrote.
“This is a regressive and dangerous approach aimed at managing and controlling Tibetan Buddhism that sends a chilling signal to the outside world about the pressures faced by people seeking to peacefully practice their religion in the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” he added.
Serthar, known as Seda in Chinese, is in an ethnically Tibetan area more than 4,000m above sea level and hundreds of kilometers from the nearest city.
The institute was founded in 1980 in an uninhabited valley and has since grown to become one of the world’s most important centers of Tibetan Buddhism, with monks, nuns and students living in small wooden homes sprawling over the hillsides surrounding the complex.
Larung Gar’s founder, Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok, who died in 2004, was known for keeping a strict focus on Buddhism rather than politics at the institute, maintaining close relationships with both Chinese authorities and the Dalai Lama.
Pictures circulated on social media showed bulldozers destroying colorful buildings at the institute, the ICT statement said.
An article in the Chinese Communist Party newspaper the Global Times newspaper said local officials were trying “to prevent fires and to ease crowd levels.”
The Buddhist academy’s survival was threatened in 2001, when armed police forced hundreds of nuns and monks to leave the site, destroying more than 1,000 homes to prevent them returning.
At the time police demanded that nuns sign documents denouncing the Dalai Lama and pledging not to return, according to overseas campaign groups, and Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok was detained for a year after the incident.
In early 2012, Serthar was rocked by violence when police fired tear gas and began shooting into a crowd of hundreds of peaceful Tibetan protesters, exile groups said.
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
‘KAMPAI’: It is said that people in Japan began brewing rice about 2,000 years ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol Traditional Japanese knowledge and skills used in the production of sake and shochu distilled spirits were approved on Wednesday for addition to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, a committee of the UN cultural body said It is believed people in the archipelago began brewing rice in a simple way about two millennia ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol. By about 1000 AD, the imperial palace had a department to supervise the manufacturing of sake and its use in rituals, the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association said. The multi-staged brewing techniques still used today are
RSS