Chinese officials have come up with an unlikely welfare measure in the hope that rising unrest among Tibetan monks will soon run its course: setting up treadmills in Tibet's monasteries.
The Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) local government has said it will install gym equipment in 20 monasteries under a package of welfare measures announced last year, which included health insurance and the provision of better living conditions. The measures were unveiled amid a spate of self-immolations, with at least 30 monks and nuns setting themselves on fire to protest religious restrictions.
The government has, in recent months, adopted a dual approach to the unrest: on the one hand it has tightened security by deploying officials within monasteries and launching “patriotic education” campaigns and on the other it has offered a range of welfare benefits to monks and nuns.
The latest measure was announced on Thursday by the sports administration of TAR, which said it had dispatched gym equipment worth 1.2 million yuan ($190,000).
“We want to improve the exercise conditions in the monasteries in order to enrich the cultural and athletic life of monks and nuns,” Yang Zhanqi, the deputy head of the regional sports bureau, told the official Xinhua news agency.
Each monastery will be given a set of 14 pieces of gym equipment including treadmills, elliptical trainers and rowing machines, described by Xinhua as “a novelty for Buddhist monasteries in Tibet, some of which are still housed in centuries-old mud-and-brick compounds”.
The Communist Party chief in Tibet, Chen Quanguo, announced a slew of welfare measures for monks last year, a move seen as an attempt to address the rising unrest in several monasteries in TAR and neighbouring areas in Sichuan and Qinghai.
The unrest began last year with protests and self-immolations by monks at the Kirti monastery in Sichuan, following which dozens of monks were taken into detention and made to undergo “patriotic education”.
Since then, the government has said it will set up a “managing committee” in monasteries to “better regulate Buddhist activities, property, and the management of their cultural relics”.
Mr. Chen said last year the government would “take great pains” to provide public services such as water, telecommunications and electricity as well as raise coverage of medical insurance and pensions. While he did not say if every monk would be eligible for the benefits, he did stress that “patriotic law-abiding monks will be praised”.
