Religious Rites Also Serve to Boost Pro-China Stance : Some Tibetans Reaffirm Ties to Beijing

With song and dance, horns and cymbals, political speeches and age-old pageantry, pro-Chinese Tibetans held a major ceremony here Sunday dedicated to Tibetan religious freedom plus a reaffirmation that this region must remain a part of China.

The ceremony’s nominal purpose was to dedicate a newly reconstructed Buddhist memorial hall at Tashilhunpo monastery here in this second-largest city of Tibet. The hall, destroyed during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, honors the five immediate predecessors of the current Panchen Lama, Tibet’s second-ranking spiritual leader.

The festivities, attended by about 4,000 people--including more than 1,000 monks--could also be seen as marking the full re-emergence of the Panchen Lama as a powerful force in both the religious and political life of the region.

Sunday’s ceremony was the most significant religious event that the Panchen Lama has presided over in Tibet in the last 25 years, according to his aides. The celebration was equally important as a political event aimed at dampening pro-independence sentiment among Tibetans.

Tibet’s top religious leader, the exiled Dalai Lama, has been a strong advocate of Tibetan independence from China. Last year, however, he modified his position by indicating that he could accept a truly autonomous and self-ruling Tibet with defense and foreign affairs under Chinese control.

China and the Dalai Lama are now exploring the possibility of opening negotiations, and Sunday’s ceremony formed part of the background to these efforts.

The Panchen Lama, who was imprisoned for almost the entire Cultural Revolution, has in recent years become an increasingly vocal advocate of Tibetan religious freedom within the context that the region belongs to China.

The Panchen Lama’s pro-China stance is in keeping with the views of some of his predecessors. From 1663 through 1937, the fifth through ninth Panchen Lamas sometimes had warmer links with China than generally was the case for the various Dalai Lamas.

The six-story memorial hall dedicated Sunday, with gilded roof and dragon-head eaves and adorned with Buddhist symbols, was restored at a cost of $2 million. It houses a 50-foot-high, jewel-encrusted, silver-and-gold-plated stupa that entombs the mummified remains of the fifth through ninth Panchen Lamas. These remains were damaged by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.

In his speech, the current Panchen Lama declared that his predecessors were “patriotic” to China and made historic contributions to “the unity of the motherland.”

So it is wrong, he added, for some people to try to use the destruction to disrupt the unity of the Tibetan and Chinese people.

Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, has been rocked by three major pro-independence demonstrations in the last 16 months, each of which ended with police firing into crowds of protesters.