China Says 2 Spied for Tibetan Exiles

Chinese authorities have arrested two Tibetans accused of spying for the region’s exiled government and plotting a videotaped self-immolation, Chinese media reported Friday.

The official New China News Agency said Cengdan Gyaco and a man identified only as Tugyi crossed the border from Nepal into Tibet in July. Local security agents arrested Cengdan Gyaco shortly thereafter and captured Tugyi two weeks ago, the agency said.

According to the report, agents in Nepal working for Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, gave Cengdan Gyaco money and espionage training and sent him to Tibet. The report alleged that he was to set himself on fire in front of the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

Tugyi was to videotape the event and send the tape to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, the report said.

An intermediate court in Lhasa sentenced Cengdan Gyaco in January to an eight-year jail term for “agitating separatism and espionage,” the official news agency reported. Tugyi remained under investigation and the two had both confessed their crimes, it added.

A spokesman for the Dalai Lama dismissed the report Friday as “absolutely false” and part of a smear campaign by Chinese authorities against the Buddhist leader.

“To send two people to Tibet to set themselves on fire is against the principles of Tibetan Buddhism,” said spokesman Thubten Samphel in a written statement that also called on Beijing to give Cengdan Gyaco a new trial.

Chinese troops annexed Tibet in 1951. The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s traditional political and religious leader, fled to India in 1959 after an unsuccessful uprising against Chinese rule. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

The Chinese report coincides with the Dalai Lama’s plans to meet next week with President Bush in Washington and with the appointment this week of Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky as the U.S. special coordinator for Tibet issues. Both events have angered the Chinese government.

The report also comes days before China marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of an agreement with Tibetan authorities giving the Communist government in Beijing control over the Himalayan region.

The report said that Cengdan Gyaco, a former lama, fled to India in 1999 and participated in a hunger strike organized by Cholka Sum, a militant exile group.

While the Dalai Lama has called on Beijing to honor its promises of autonomy for Tibet, exile groups such as the Cholka Sum and the Tibetan Youth Congress advocate outright independence.

“Despite His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s advice, there are many Tibetans who have signed up for onto-death hunger strikes organized by . . . the Tibetan Youth Congress and the Cholka Sum,” a statement by the Dalai Lama’s spokesman said. “But over these organizations or the individuals who have signed for such hunger strikes, the Tibetan administration has no control.”

The statement also noted that the Dalai Lama had objected to the self-immolation of Tibetan Youth Congress activist Thubten Ngodrub during a 1998 hunger strike in New Delhi.