File photo shows Buddhist nuns leaving the monastery after praying at the Larung Gar Buddhist Institute in Sertar county (known as Seda in Chinese) in the remote Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China’s Sichuan province. — AFP photo
BEIJING: Chinese authorities are renovating one of the world’s largest centres of learning for Tibetan Buddhism to prevent overcrowding and fires, a state-run newspaper said yesterday, denying Tibetan rights groups’ charges of demolition and evictions.
Groups including the British-based International Campaign for Tibet say demolition work began last week at Larung Gar in Garze, a heavily Tibetan part of the southwestern province of Sichuan.
Tibetan-populated areas of western China, including in Sichuan, have in recent years been at the epicentre of self-immolation and other protests against Chinese rule.
China routinely denies accusations by exiles and rights groups of rights abuses in Tibetan parts of the country and insists it allows freedom of religion, blaming exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama for promoting unrest.
The Global Times, an influential tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, quoted an unnamed government official in Garze as saying Buddhist leaders themselves have been trying to reduce the number of unregistered monks and nuns at Larung Gar.
“The site has grown immensely in recent years, with a steady influx of tourists and lay people from other provinces and foreigners, that even monastery leaders have lost track of the number of their personnel,” the official said, in a report in the paper’s English-language edition.
“It is unfair and a burden on them to use offerings given by local believers to provide free accommodation and education to the unregistered,” the official added.
The “dismantling” of cabins which dot the hillside around the centre and where people live will help give firefighters access as there have been several fires in recent years, the newspaper added.
The Global Times said the government was requiring that only the roughly 8,000 monks and nuns already registered there be allowed to live at Larung Gar. — Reuters