Zogchen Monastery displays Dalai Lama portrait in Tibet
By Tendar Tsering
DHARAMSHALA, April 5: Despite crackdown, monks at the Zogchen monastery in north eastern side of Tibet displayed a huge portrait of the Dalai Lama at one of its annual religious festivals on March 29.
Coinciding the annual traditional religious ritual ceremony and religious dance, Zogchen monastery in the Kham region of Tibet displayed a huge portrait of the Tibetan Spiritual Leader, the Dalai Lama in front of the monastery in the monastery courtyard.
The portrait was displayed in the courtyard from seven in the morning till five in the evening on the second day of last month.
Exile sources with contacts in Tibet told reporters that hundreds of Tibetan monks and lay people in the region paid homage to the portrait of the Dalai Lama, and offered the Tibetan traditional and auspicious scarves ‘Khatak’ to the photo of the Dalai Lama.
Following the portrait display, the Chinese government in the locality have tightened the security over the monastery, and warned the Tibetans that if any such disobedient action repeats that both the monastery and public will be in big trouble.
Tibetans in the locality fear that Zogchen Ling Rinpoche, the highest Tibetan spiritual leader who presided over the ceremony might be arrested soon, sources said.
Khenpo Gyewala resurfaced
Khenpo Gyewala, highly-revered abbot and respected scholar at the same monastery is said have resurfaced after spending 20 days of incommunicado detention in police custody. However, where about of the abbot is still unknown.
A relative of the Khenpo was called to Zatoe county Public Security Bureau (PSB) office; a day prior to the Dalai Lama portrait was display by the monastery.
“The relative, whose identity could not be established immediately, was allowed to speak on phone with Khenpo Gyewala for three minutes,” the Dharamshala based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) said in a release yesterday.
“Before talking on phone to Khenpo, the relative was warned by officers not to share information about Khenpo’s sister who died on 15 March after falling unconscious in the county PSB office. Sources identified the deceased sister as Boyang,” the TCHRD said.
Boyang died in a hospital where she was brought after she fell unconscious in the county Public Security Bureau office last month. She had been approaching the PSB office a number of times enquiring and urging the officials to disclose information about her brother Khenpo Gyewala. “However, the PSB office repeatedly refused to provide any information forcing the sister to shout at the officials. The ensuing moments saw the sister apparently suffering emotional shock, sources said, as she lost consciousness and fell down in the PSB office,” the TCHRD has said in another release last month.
Concerned about the growing illiteracy among Tibetan children in the region, Khenpo had founded the Monsel School which offers classes in Tibetan language and grammar, Buddhism and cultural values every winter when government schools in the region are closed for vacation. The school had some 800 students in attendance; mostly local children in the nomadic area and children of newly resettled Tibetan nomads in Zatoe County, according to TCHRD. Khenpo Gyewala and a number other fellow teachers of the Monsel school were initially detained on February 10, following a government order to ban Dechen Shingdrup, a famed local religious festival presided over by all the major religious personalities in the region. They were released the same day in the evening after hundreds of Monsel students approached the PSB office and demanded their release. However, on March 8, Khenpo Gyewala and about 13 others, who had worked closely with him, “disappeared.”
According to TCHRD, the 13 missing ones along with the Khenpo are said to have released from the Chinese custody on March 25.
