Tibetan relics released

Press, 2 January 1985, Page 29

Tibetan relics released

NZPA-AP Peking Two hundred tonnes of Tibetan Buddhist relics seized during China’s 196676 Cultural Revolution have been returned to their monasteries for restoration, the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, has reported. The agency said Tibetan Buddhists collected the images of Buddha, bronzes, and ritual objects for religious services during a tour of the mountainous region beginning last spring. The report quoted Yin Fatang, head of the Chinese Communist Party in Tibet, as saying that all Tibetan reliious figures who contributed to the preservation of relics and Buddhist studies should be given awards in the future.

The measures are the Government’s latest moves in an attempt tb win the support of Tibet’s 1.8 million people, nearly 35 years after

Chinese troops invaded and annexed the region. Yin was quoted as telling a meeting of the Tibetan Buddhist Association in Lhasa that Buddhists should serve Tibet’s economic construction as well as regligion. They should help Tibetans become well-off as soon as possible, he said. After clamping down on dissent and closing some 3000 monasteries in the 19605, the Government has renovated and reopened 75 temples in a show of religious tolerance. Almost all native Tibetans are Buddhists. Their traditional ruler, Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, fled to exile in India with 100,000 followers after an unsuccessful uprising in 1959. His desire to return home for a 1985 visit was dashed in November when his envoys were told it was unsuitable.