[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 20 (Tuesday, January 30, 2018)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E117-E118]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   CHINA IMPOSES COMMUNIST CONTROL OVER LARUNG GAR MONASTERY IN TIBET

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, January 30, 2018

  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my outrage about 
the action by the Chinese authorities to impose Communist Party control 
over Larung Gar, the Tibetan Monastery and learning center of Tibetan 
Buddhism.
  According to information published by Human Rights Watch on January 
24, 2018, some 200 Communist Party cadres and lay officials are taking 
over all management, finances, security, admissions, and even the 
choice of textbooks at the Larung Gar center, following demolitions and 
expulsions carried out last year.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to the attention of my colleagues 
the information released by Human Rights Watch. It is a significant 
blow to freedom of religion in Tibet and China, and a matter of great 
concern to all members of Congress.

                  [Human Rights Watch, Jan. 24, 2018]

                China: New Controls on Tibetan Monastery

       New York--The Chinese authorities have imposed new 
     administrative controls on the Tibetan Buddhist monastic 
     center of Larung Gar that infringe upon freedom of religion, 
     Human Rights Watch said today.
       According to an official document obtained by Human Rights 
     Watch, some 200 Communist Party cadres and lay officials are 
     taking over all management, finances, security, admissions, 
     and even the choice of textbooks at the center, following 
     demolitions and expulsions in 2017.
       ``The new government controls over Larung Gar fly in the 
     face of Party claims that China respects constitutionally 
     protected religious beliefs,'' said Sophie Richardson, China 
     director at Human Rights Watch. ``The micromanagement of the 
     Tibetan monastery encroaches on religious

[[Page E118]]

     freedom and is likely to fuel resentment against Beijing.''
       The brochure emphasizes increased security and heightened 
     control of the monks and nuns, calling for rigid limits on 
     the numbers allowed to stay there, and for ongoing 
     surveillance of the monastery population through the 
     establishment of a ``grid management'' system throughout the 
     settlement. It also states that all residents and visitors 
     will be subjected to ``real-name registration,'' with monks 
     required to have red tags or labels (Tibetan: byang bu), 
     while nuns will have yellow labels, and lay devotees will 
     have green ones.
       Larung Gar was the largest center of Buddhist monasticism 
     in Tibet, if not the world, until an eight-month program of 
     expulsions and demolitions, which ended in April 2017 after 
     reducing the number of residents to around 5,000. It had 
     previously been run by Tibetan monks and nuns selected by 
     senior members of the monastery. The government's takeover of 
     the administration--described in the official document as 
     ``standardization''--could have far more significant impact 
     than the demolitions and expulsions. The actions led a group 
     of experts from the United Nations in November 2016 to ask 
     the Chinese government to provide information about the legal 
     grounds for the expulsions.
       The new document is an undated, four-page brochure printed 
     in color in Chinese and Tibetan and apparently intended for 
     public distribution. It ends with a quotation from Liu 
     Chengming, Party secretary of Kandze prefecture, a supposedly 
     autonomous area of Sichuan province that includes Larung Gar. 
     The document appears to have been issued either by his office 
     or by officials running Larung Gar.
       The document, made available in or shortly before August 
     2017, calls for the monastic settlement (Tibetan: gar) to be 
     divided into two sections with a wall between them, with one 
     section designated as an ``institute'' or academy with a 
     maximum of 1,500 residents, who would be mainly monks, and 
     one as a monastery with a maximum of 3,500 residents, mainly 
     nuns.
       The original order for the demolitions, which Human Rights 
     Watch obtained and published in June 2016, indicated that in 
     the future three-fifths of the members of the main management 
     committee at Larung Gar would be lay officials instead of 
     monks. That plan was put into practice last August when local 
     authorities announced the names of six top lay officials who 
     had been given positions within Larung Gar's two main 
     management committees. All of them, including the deputy 
     police chief of Kandze prefecture, are Communist Party cadres 
     and are therefore required to be atheists.
       The new document shows that scores of other cadres are to 
     be installed not just in the management committee, but at 
     every level and in each section of the monastic settlement. 
     They will hold nearly half of the positions on most 
     committees and in most offices, and in most cases will occupy 
     the top positions. The prefectural deputy police chief will 
     be party secretary and principal at the Larung Gar Institute, 
     three of his seven deputy principals will be cadres, and the 
     six ``sub-area management units'' (Chinese: guanli zu) that 
     supervise the monks at the institute will each be headed by a 
     cadre rather than a monk.
       According to the brochure, new committees will also be set 
     up to handle propaganda, ``internal security,'' finances, 
     education, and students within the institute. Half of the 
     people running these committees will be cadres, 97 of whom 
     will be stationed in the institute. Monastery sources have 
     confirmed to Human Rights Watch that at least the same number 
     will be stationed within the other section of the settlement, 
     which is now officially designated as the ``monastery.'' 
     These sources said that a large building has already been 
     constructed to house the cadres.
       ``The administrative takeover of Larung Gar by Party 
     officials shows that the government's aim was not merely to 
     reduce numbers at the settlement,'' Richardson said. 
     ``Chinese authorities are also imposing pervasive control and 
     surveillance over every level of activity within religious 
     communities.''
       According to the brochure, 40 percent of teaching at Larung 
     Gar Buddhist Institute must now consist of classes in 
     politics and other non-religious subjects. The primary 
     criterion for accepting students will be whether they ``have 
     a firm political stand, accepting the Great Motherland, the 
     Chinese [Chinese: Zhonghua] people, Chinese culture, the 
     Chinese Communist Party and socialism with Chinese 
     characteristics.'' The objectives of study will include to 
     ``honor and support the Chinese Communist Party and the 
     socialist system'' and to train monks who ``defend the 
     unification of the Motherland, uphold nationality unity and 
     patriotic religion and abide by their vows.''
       Only residents of Sichuan province will be allowed to 
     apply, other than in exceptional cases, eliminating monks and 
     nuns from other Tibetan areas--which had been a 
     distinguishing mark of Larung Gar. Since 2008, Chinese 
     authorities have imposed similar limits on other major 
     Tibetan monasteries, banning them from accepting monks and 
     nuns from outside the local area. The document also indicates 
     that steps will be taken to stop those who have been expelled 
     from returning to the settlement.
       The scale of the Communist Party's intervention at Larung 
     Gar is unprecedented, Human Rights Watch said. Since October 
     2011 permanent teams of cadres have been stationed in all 
     monasteries in the Tibet Autonomous Region, the central 
     Tibetan area far to the west of Larung Gar, where they have 
     taken over the management committee of each monastery. There 
     have been reports of similar takeovers of some monasteries in 
     eastern Tibetan areas. But none are known to have consisted 
     of such large teams of cadres, or to have included cadres 
     even at the lowest levels of monastery management.
       The changes at Larung Gar are in line with current religion 
     policy, which emphasizes ensuring political stability in 
     monasteries by intensifying official management. It also 
     rewards political compliance by monks and nuns with public 
     praise, titles such as ``model patriotic monk,'' and other 
     material or social benefits. The document aims to make the 
     study of Buddhism ``standardized, law-abiding and modern,'' a 
     reference to a new, centralized system for managing religious 
     training, textbooks, and curricular content maintained mainly 
     through a network of higher studies institutes being 
     constructed throughout China to retrain Buddhist monks.
       The scheme appears designed to micromanage religious 
     institutions rather than close them down and to produce a new 
     generation of Buddhist teachers trained equally in religious 
     doctrine and state ideology in order to ``adapt Tibetan 
     Buddhism to socialist society.''
       ``The Chinese government's latest inroads at Larung Gar 
     show a pernicious intent to exercise extreme control over 
     religious practice,'' Richardson said. ``This is an immediate 
     threat to the religious freedom of all Tibetans, but a long-
     term threat to all Chinese.''

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