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 BEIJING (AP) - Tibet's Buddhist monks are normally known for their spiritual detachment. But the impassioned protests they have led this week against Chinese rule follow years of tightening controls on their religion.
For more than a decade, China has launched accelerating waves of campaigns to force the Buddhist clergy, who once ran Tibet, and ordinary Tibetans to distance themselves from the Dalai Lama. Monks were ordered to renounce their exiled spiritual leader, while lay people were dissuaded from praying for him.
In recent months, these patriotic education campaigns took a nastier turn, Tibet specialists said, with harsher rhetoric aimed at the Dalai Lama and tighter enforcement of bans on worship by students and government officials.
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