ID :
13716
Thu, 07/24/2008 - 19:50
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China tells officials to call back children from Dalai schools

Raghavendra Beijing, July 24 (PTI) China has launched a fresh crackdown on the Dalai Lama supporters, this time within the ruling Communist Party, by issuing an ultimatum to cadres and officials in Tibet to call back their children within two months from overseas schools and monasteries run by him inIndia and other countries.

Failure to comply with the notice issued on July 14 would invite expulsion from the party and sacking from their posts under a regulation drawn up by the regional party and government disciplinary inspection commissions, state-runChina Daily said.

Present and retired party members and government employees in the Tibet Autonomous Region are covered by theregulation, it said.

After the unrest erupted in Tibet in March which saw the worst anti-government protests in two decades, China has persistently attacked the self-exiled Tibetan leader based in India and his supporters, whom Beijing calls "the Dalaiclique", accusing them of having orchestrated the violence.

The Dalai Lama who fled to India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 has also been accused of trying to "sabotage" the Beijing Olympic Games. The Nobellaureate has denied both charges.

Under intense global pressure ahead of the Olympic Games, Chinese government representatives and envoys of the Dalai Lama held two rounds of fence-mending talks, including the latest in the first week of July, but failed to make anyheadway.

The "Dalai clique's" offer of free scholarships, boarding and lodging was designed to attract Tibetan students to leave their homes and join its educational institutions outside China, the report carried in the International Herald Leader (I.H.L.), owned by official Xinhua news agency, hasreported.

Since 1960, the year after he fled to India, the Dalai Lama had been setting up schools overseas, a study conducted by I.H.L. and published in the paper said, noting that hundreds of monasteries and temples and about 80 schools for all age groups with more than 27,000 students and about 2,000teachers were now being operated.

A college in Dharamsala in India with about 650 students, offered Young Tibetans not only free tuition and accommodation – worth about Rs. 2,000 a month – but also paysthem a monthly stipend of Rs 100, it claimed.

The I.H.L. study said about 40 percent of Tibetan students there pursue higher education, many in Western countries, and called the incentives as part of the "Dalai clique's aim to brainwash students under the cloak of religion and education." The money spent on "such brainwashing" showed that the "Dalai clique" continued to receive aid from "Western anti- China forces", such as the National Endowment for Democracy, George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and the U.S.-based TibetFoundation, the I.H.L. said.


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