Tibetan monks call for support from U.N.

Press, 6 October 1987, Page 10

Tibetan monks call for support from U.N.

N2PA-AP Lhasa Buddhist monks at Tibet’s three leading monasteries issued a statement yesterday asking the United Nations to support their call for independence and denouncing human rights violations under Chinese rule.

"We Tibetans have asked the Chinese who have occupied our country to leave,” said a .written statement issued by religious leaders at the Sera, Ganden and Drepung monasteries. The statement followed independence demonstrations on September 27 and last Thursday. The death toll in the second protest, which involved at least 2000 people, rose to 13 according to information sent from Lhasa yesterday. American, Swedish and German doctors in Lhasa said they had seen seven Tibetans killed in the protest, at least five of whom were shot to death. Chinese officials said six police were killed. Lhasa was quiet yesterday, with police patrolling the city in plain clothes. "The Chinese have

taken away our human rights for 30 years but the Tibetans will continue to forever recognise (the) Dalai Lama as leader,” the monks’ statement said. “The United Nations should support our just cause and we hope the lovers of human rights will come to Tibet to see for themselves,” said the statement, written in Tibetan. A copy of it was obtained by the Associated Press and translated by Tibetan sources. The Dalai Lama was Tibet’s civil and religious leader until China annexed the remote Himalayan region in 1950, enforcing a centuries-old territorial claim. The Dalai Lama fled in 1959 after a failed uprising by his supporters, and has lived in India since. The monks’ statement

revealed that the initial demonstration on September 27, in which 21 monks and five others shouted slogans and marched into a police cordon, had been planned in advance. The statement said it was organised by monks from the Sera monastery just outside Lhasa, which at one time was the largest monastery in Tibet with more than 10,000 monks. It now houses several hundred. According to the statement, residents of Lhasa knew three days in advance the protest would take place in the square in front of the Jokhang Temple, one of Tibetan Buddhism’s holiest sites. Sera monks made up the majority of those killed, wounded and arrested in Thursday’s protest, in which the police station in the temple

square was burned by an angry crowd who stoned police. Western doctors visiting Lhasa as tourists said the dead included an eight-year-old boy shot in the back, a 25-year-old man shot in the chest, a 16-year-old boy shot in the face, and one monk shot by police in the police station. They said that two other monks were killed but did not give details. “The death toll Is definitely more than that,” said Dr Blake Kerr, of Buffalo, New York, one of two Americans detained briefly by Lhasa police last week for displaying Tibetan flags on their luggage. He and the other American, John Ackerly, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, remained in Lhasa yesterday. The United States Embassy in Peking

said they were detained only for a few hours and had their passports taken for several days. Tibetan sources said six monks were seriously wounded by gunshots and were in the Lhasa People’s Hospital, but were not receiving treatment for their wounds. The sources quoted one monk as saying that he was happy because he knew he had killed two Chinese police. Dozens of people were known to have been arrested, but no firm estimate could be obtained. Foreign travellers in Lhasa pooled medical supplies to give to wounded Tibetans who feared going to hospitals for treatment Chinese authorities posted signs warning travellers not to become involved in the unrest