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Driru map

Chinese authorities in Tibet’s Driru County have shut down Drongna monastery as well as surrounding other monasteries in the region with paramilitary police and detaining monks. In recent weeks, security forces have been raiding monks’ quarters and family homes, seizing computers and mobile phones. Three monks from the Driru area were detained by police at the end of November while visiting Tibet’s regional capital Lhasa, a source told Radio Free Asia (RFA), while eight monks from Driru’s Rabten Monastery who had studied at Palyul, Sershul, and Sertha monasteries in neighbouring Chinese provinces have also been detained. According to the source, Chinese paramilitary forces now surround Tamoe, Rabten, and Dron Na monasteries.

More than a 1,000 Tibetans have been detained since the Chinese launched their crackdown in Driru in September. Of these, some 600 detainees are being held in Driru’s neighbouring Nagchu (Naqu) county centre, with 200 held in Tsamtha village in Driru, and another 200 held in the Driru county detention centre. Samdrup, a European-based Tibetan, told RFA that “all those under detention are being questioned and given programs of political re-education.”

Geshe Ngawang Jamyang, a senior monk and a popular teacher in Driru County, was beaten to death in custody in mid December, 2013.
Photo: RFA

Driru has been declared a “county with political instability” by the Chinese government and extreme measures are being taken to “bring it under control”. A source told RFA “It believes that if Driru is not brought under control, this could have a disruptive impact in other areas, and they are conducting what they call an ‘intense and thorough’ political re-education program in which meetings are being conducted both day and night in the villages and monasteries”.  Among those targeted are monks who have visited India and Nepal; they are being made to undergo “intense re-education sessions”. Monks from the area who have studied in Buddhist Institutions in neighbouring Chinese provinces are also being recalled for indoctrination, possibly to mitigate their influence on other counties.

Driru County in the Tibet Autonomous Region has consistently defied Chinese attempts to implement forced displays of loyalty, such as flying the Chinese flag from their rooftops. The protest in Driru sparked in September when members of Mowa village threw the flags given to them into a nearby river.