www.TibetanReview.net, June 30’08
Donations in money totaling 46.32 million yuan and disaster relief materials valued at 12.9201 million yuan were raised for the May 12 Sichuan earthquake victims in Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) by Jun 8 while a drive to raise more donations continued in the region, reported China’s online Tibet news service en.Tibet.cn Jun 9. It said that “especial Party fees” collected from party members in the TAR for the disaster relief totalled 38.96 million yuan by the end of May.
The report added that earlier, on May 18, TAR had delivered disaster relief supplies valued at over 12 million yuan by the Qinghai-Tibet Railway.
A Xinhua report Jun 10 said that donations from local temples and religious people of TAR had totalled 1.17 million yuan ($168,982). Besides, it said the temples had held various Buddhist religious services to pray for the dead. The donation received included those from the Jokhang Temple (100,000 yuan), Ramoche Temple (20,800 yuan), Drepung Monastery (34,000 yuan), Sera monastery (38,000 yuan) and the Ganden Temple (25,000 yuan). Major individual donors included the Chinese appointed Panchen Gyaltsen Norbu (100,000 yuan) and Zhukang Tubdankezhub (102,000 yuan), head of the Tibet branch of the Buddhist Association of China.