China conducts demolitions at Tibetan Buddhist study site
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Chinese authorities in southwestern Sichuan province have evicted followers and razed hundreds of homes at one of the world's largest centers of Tibetan Buddhist learning in a months-long operation that has drawn protests from Tibetans in exile.
Local officials in Garze prefecture say they are carrying out demolitions to prevent overcrowding and to renovate Larung Gar, a sprawling, mountainside settlement that housed more than 10,000 monks and nuns who stayed and studied for months at a time. Authorities are reportedly seeking to cut the population by half, to 5,000.
Overseas Tibetan groups say the forced evictions and demolitions are meant to put a damper on the practice and spread of Tibetan Buddhism. Larung Gar's academy has increasingly attracted large numbers of disciples from China's Han ethnic majority as well as foreign visitors.
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Earlier this year, a video circulated on social media that purportedly showed young Tibetan nuns from the monastery being directed to sing about their Chinese-ness and pledge their patriotic loyalty inside a government building.
Several United Nations special rapporteurs wrote to the Chinese government in November to express concern about "serious repression" of Buddhist Tibetan cultural and religious practices in the region.