CHINA-INTERNAL: TIBET-RELIGION
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Authorities overseeing the destruction of Sichuan’s Larung Gar Buddhist Academy have on November 7, 2016, canceled the eight-day festival called Dechen Shingdrup, or Accomplishing the Pure Land of Great Bliss, and forbidden public gatherings, leaving the center’s remaining monks and nuns to pray privately in their rooms. The Dechen Shingdrup is an annual religious assembly, that begins each year on the 18th day of the ninth month of the Tibetan Lunar Calendar. That date falls this year on Nov. 17. Earlier quoting local sources, Radio Free Asia (RFA)'s Tibetan service reported on November 3, 2016 that monks and nuns targeted for eviction from Sichuan’s Larung Gar Buddhist Institute are now being locked out of their residences, with no chance given to retrieve their belongings before they are sent away. RFA said “Officials are now locking the doors of the monks’ and nuns’ quarters when the occupants are at class or away on an errand. Then, when they return, they are unable to get inside.” Chinese officials are warning that anyone found tampering with the locks, which are numbered and painted red, will have broken the law and be dealt with accordingly. The RFA report added that the order now to reduce the number of Larung Gar’s residents by about half to a maximum level of 5,000 next year “comes from higher authorities,” with China’s president Xi Jinping taking a personal interest in the matter. Thousands have already left, with hundreds sent away by bus on Oct. 30 alone.
(Comment: Many thousands of Tibetans and Han Chinese study at the sprawling Larung Gar complex, which was founded in 1980 by the late religious teacher Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok and is one of the world’s largest and most important centers for the study of Tibetan Buddhism.)
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