(TibetanReview.net, Jul27’24) – After brushing aside heartbreaking pleas, protests and what not, Chinese authorities in Tsolho (Chinese: Hainan) Prefecture of Qinghai province have completed the demolition of a 135-year-old Tibetan Buddhist monastery ahead of the planned completion later this year of an expansion of the world’s tallest 3D-printed hydropower dam. Very little has been done to fulfil the promise to rebuild the monastery elsewhere while its 160 monks are yet to see the promised alternative housing, said the Tibetan service of rfa.org Jul 27, citing sources from Tibet and exile.
Local Tibetans had pleaded for the demolition or relocation of Atsok Gon Dechen Choekhorling Monastery in the prefecture’s Dragkar county (Xinghai) to be scrapped and the dam expansion plan cancelled out of consideration for their veneration for its sanctity and antiquity. Nevertheless, in Apr 2023, China’s Department of National Heritage declared that the artifacts and murals inside the monastery were of “no significant value or importance” and so began the work for its relocation.
The report said an early July video footage shows that nothing has remained of the religious structure, with the monastery’s main prayer halls and the many stupas that surround it completely razed to the ground.
The work of the expansion of the Yangqu hydropower station on the Yellow River (Tibetan: Machu) was started in the province in 2022 and will be completed later this year. Filling it would submerge the 19th century monastery’s site.
The report said Chinese authorities have spoken of taking two to three years to rebuild the monastery elsewhere. “However, only a few tens of thousands of Chinese yuan have been allocated for the reconstruction, with no additional funds planned,” the report quoted one of the sources as saying.
Meanwhile, the monastery’s 160 monks continue to live in makeshift tin huts. Nothing has materialised of the alternative housing for them in Khokar Naglo near the county’s Palkha township promised by the authorities, the report cited several sources as saying.
Tibetan have been prohibited from taking pictures of the site where the monastery stood only months earlier.
The Chinese authorities’ only concern is seen to be focused on a successful completion of the hydropower dam’s expansion.
Lu Gang, secretary of the prefecture party committee, visited the site on Jul 25, called the expansion plan a major project for the prefecture to build a “national clean energy industry highland”, and told local authorities to ensure its gate closed completely when built to store water as scheduled for power generation, the report said.