XPost: hk.politics, soc.culture.china, soc.culture.indian
XPost: soc.culture.usa, talk.politics.tibet
Larung Gar: China 'destroys buildings' at Tibetan Buddhist academy
Campaign groups say China has started demolishing buildings at Larung Gar,
one of the largest centres of Buddhist learning in Tibet.
The London-based Free Tibet group says demolitions at the site began on Wednesday and a number of people living there have been evicted.
It follows an order last month by the local authorities to cut the number of Larung Gar residents by half to 5,000.
Chinese officials are reported to have cited overcrowding concerns.
Larung Gar is said to be the biggest Tibetan Buddhist institute in the world. The academy and monastery, founded in 1980, sprawls over a mountainside
in Sertar county in eastern Tibet, and attracts thousands of Buddhist monks
and nuns who wish to study there.
The students commonly stay in log cabins and correspondents say the
site has grown considerably in recent years.
Free Tibet published several pictures on Twitter and video footage on
YouTube that appeared to show wooden buildings razed to the ground.
Heavy equipment that could have been used for demolition was seen in
some of the images.
Read more here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-36863888
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)