Pro-China Tibetan Calls for Moderation

The achievement of stability in riot-torn Tibet is threatened by officials who favor repressive policies, a high-ranking, pro-Chinese Tibetan religious leader said Monday.

The Panchen Lama, who with the exiled Dalai Lama represents the apex of Tibet’s Buddhist hierarchy, told reporters that rioters who favor Tibetan independence should be punished. But he also urged the implementation of more liberal Chinese policies toward Tibetan religion and culture.

Because anti-Chinese rioting has flared again in Lhasa, “some people developed some erroneous ideas about the Tibetan people,” the Panchen Lama said in a speech published Monday in the official People’s Daily. “They say, ‘If you treat them well, they misbehave, but if you suppress them, they behave, so they should be ruthlessly suppressed, and then they’ll stop making trouble.’ ”

Remarks ‘Extremely Wrong’

He added: “These remarks are extremely wrong. People who think like this must be educated, or they will damage relations between the Tibetan and Chinese people and hurt the nation.”

Tibet, which over the centuries has sometimes been independent and sometimes been controlled by China, has been firmly under Beijing’s rule since 1951.

Speaking at a news conference, the Panchen Lama, who is also a vice chairman of China’s National People’s Congress, said 5 people were killed and more than 200 were arrested in rioting March 5. His remarks represented the first time that official figures were provided in connection with the latest clash between thousands of angry Tibetans and police.

Among the victims, he said, were a policeman and a monk. In the days immediately after the riot, the Chinese media reported that a policeman was killed but said nothing about any other deaths. Western witnesses have said that at least eight people died in the rioting, and monks in Lhasa have told Western visitors that the death toll exceeded 20.

The Panchen Lama acknowledged Monday that two rioters were shot to death. “Some rioters,” he said, “were fiercely attacking the military police, and in self-defense they (police) fired several shots into the air, to warn them and to defend themselves, and two people were killed.”

The official New China News Agency had reported that “no policemen carried arms while on duty that day.”

The Panchen Lama also said that the Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since an abortive Tibetan uprising in 1959, can return and live in Lhasa if he renounces his advocacy of Tibetan independence. Several years ago, when Beijing began making this offer, it was linked with a requirement that the Dalai Lama live in the Chinese capital.

The Dalai Lama, who was beginning a 12-day private visit to Britain on Monday, has repeatedly said he will not give up trying to obtain independence for Tibet.

In his speech published Monday, the Panchen Lama warned against the viewpoint that the response to increasing Tibetan riots should be to “close the temples and ruthlessly punish the monks.”

Cool-Headed Leaders

“We should never again fall into the morass of the same mistakes we made before,” he said. “We should be glad that on this point the leaders of the Communist Party Central Committee and the leaders of Tibet are very cool-headed and rational.”

The Panchen Lama said at the news conference that “to ensure long-term order and stability in Tibet,” the government must give the region genuine autonomy, correct mistakes caused by leftist policies and accelerate the area’s cultural and economic development.

But many officials in Tibet still favor repression of religious activity and other harsh measures, he said. Their numbers are so large, he said, that solving the problem by removing them is out of the question.