16 January 2008
Religious statues missing from monastery
(RFA) Twelve historic statues have gone missing from the Pashoe Naira monastery in Pashoe (Chin: Basu) county, Chamdo (Changdu) prefecture, where departing monks are being replaced by government selected monks, according to a Radio Free Asia (RFA) source in the region. The source told RFA’s Tibetan service: "This monastery had 21 monks but later all of them were either forced to leave or they left the monastery on their own and moved to Lhasa. In their place, the Chinese authorities selected their own monks to be in the monastery". The most important statue that is missing is that of Tsongkapa, founder of the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism, according to local residents. The source also said local Tibetan devotees had appealed to the newly installed monks and local officials to search for and restore the statues but had met with no response. "When the local officials were approached, the officials were unresponsive and even refused to investigate the incident. The local people were told that they will be eventually found", the Tibetan source said. When the original monks left, statues of the controversial deity Dorje Shugden, the cult of which is discouraged by the Dalai Lama, were installed. "This monastery previously had no history of worshiping Shugden", the source added.