NEWS-Bejing's Puppet Panchen Lama R

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Subject: NEWS-Bejing's Puppet Panchen Lama Returns Under Heavy Security

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST - June 29, 1999

TIBET
Bejing's Puppet Panchen Lama Returns Under Heavy Security

-Heavy security for Panchen Lama ritual-
REUTERS

The nine-year-old boy picked by Beijing as Tibet's second holiest figure
is
under heavy police protection because of fears for his safety on his
first
return to the region.
The Panchen Lama, Gyaincain Norbu, was yesterday escorted in a
21-vehicle
police motorcade to a sacred Buddhist ritual in his own monastery in
Shigatse.

Monks with walkie-talkies patrolled the grounds of the Tashilhunpo
monastery
and Buddhist pilgrims were kept at a distance.

The motorcade included an emergency medical vehicle and three police
cars.

During the ceremony, a giant Tibetan tanka, a satin embroidered icon
roughly
15 storeys high, was unfurled by horn-blowing monks behind the
monastery.

Authorities are using the visit to try to boost the legitimacy of the
11th
Panchen Lama against a rival named by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled
spiritual leader.

According to accounts of witnesses and interviews with monks, security
precautions have been elaborate and the reaction of Tibet's devout
Buddhist
population has been wary.

In Lhasa, troops with machineguns ringed the Jokhang temple when the boy
visited earlier this month under cover of darkness early one morning,
one
monk said.

The main road to Lhasa's international airport was sealed off.

Wang Dui, the second ranking administrative official at the Jokhang
temple,
said the boy was welcomed "very warmly and with great pomp".

But a red-robed monk, speaking out of earshot, said: "Of course he
doesn't
have any support. He came at night and there were troops everywhere. He
just
sat there looking uncomfortable.

"I really felt sorry for him. He's being used as a pawn."

Yesterday, a group of Western reporters was allowed to watch the boy's
motorcade arrive at the Tashilhunpo monastery, but it was impossible to
see
him through heavily tinted car windows.

Asked what he thought about the boy, one monk jabbed his thumb towards a
thickset official in a trench coat then pressed a finger to his lips