China bans book on Tibet

2004-03-17 11:44

Beijing - China has banned a book on Tibet which reveals sensitive religious issues, including how the exiled Dalai Lama is still revered by Tibetans inside Tibet, a London-based rights group said on Wednesday.

Notes on Tibet, written in Chinese by the Tibetan author Oser, was banned late last year after she tried to get it published in southern Guangdong province where the political climate is usually more tolerant, the Tibet Information Network said.

The book is a collection of 38 essays describing the author's encounters with different people and places in Tibet.

Authorities considered 10 of the essays were sufficiently contentious to warrant banning the book, TIN said in a statement.

"In these 10 essays, the author describes among other things the deep respect shown towards the Dalai Lama by Tibetans inside Tibet; the dilemmas and political restrictions faced by a Tibetan monk when he was sent abroad on an official visit; and how some Chinese nuns were expelled from the Serthar Buddhist Institute," it said.

Oser is a poet and the author of a number of articles on Tibet written in Chinese, TIN said.

The author previously worked at the Chinese language journal Tibetan Literature in Lhasa, but has fled the Tibetan capital over the controversy surrounding her book.

Censorship in Tibet is routinely practised by the Chinese Han-controlled government which has ruled the region since it was "peacefully liberated" by the People's Liberation Army in 1951.

The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, fled Lhasa in 1959 following an aborted coup and has set up a government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India.

- SAPA