Meng Deli, director of the autonomous region's justice department, said here Saturday that there are three prisons in Tibet, with 2,300 inmates.

The number of those on subversion charges makes up a mere five percent, the official told Xinhua.

"Most of prisoners involved in the turbulence in Tibet's capital Lhasa in the late 1980s have been set free," Meng said, adding that no one has been put in jail for possessing portraits of the Dalai Lama or shouting slogans in support of the Dalai Lama.

"Claims that Tibet is a police state, or carries out wholesale arrests of monks, or has jailed many people under 18 years old for political offences are utter nonsense. Such rumors are spread by the Dalai Lama's clique and other anti-China forces," he said.

Xinhua reporters visited the autonomous region's prison, the largest in Tibet. An air of peace, kindness and order permeated the prison's yard, where willows were growing and flowers blossoming.

In a reading room, prisoners are reading novels in the Tibetan language, literacy textbooks and Tibetan folk tales. On the walls, newspapers published by female prisoners, poems and prose in both Chinese and Tibetan could be seen.

On the sports ground, male prisoners were playing table tennis and basketball.

Dawa Yangzhin, a 31-year-old nun of the Minrichong Temple, was jailed after the turbulence in Lhasa. She has only one year left of her prison term to serve.

"I very much regret what I did. Before being put in jail, I was illiterate and had no awareness of Tibetan history or the state laws," Yangzhin said. ``During the turbulence, I was incited by others with sinister motives."

Yangzhin is attending the literacy training program in jail. "I have never been abused or beaten. I was sent to hospital to receive good treatment when I was sick," she said.

According to her, she is able to practice her religion, and would like to be nun again after being freed.

Cering Puncog, director of the region's prisons bureau, said that all the prisoners were put in jail after strict trials and sentencing by courts. With complete trial records, the prisoners can all file complaints if they so wish, he noted.

The criminals also have right to write to their families and even have a chance of get-togethers on holidays.

Statistics show that the number of prisoners in Tibet accounts for 0.9 per thousand of its total population. This figure is far lower than the nation's average. The recidivism rate over the past ten years has been only four percent, three percent lower than the country's average.

It is learned that the major crimes committed by prisoners in Tibet's jails are crimes of property and violence, making up 85 percent of the total. Besides crimes of property, violence and subversion, other types of crimes account for nine percent.

Female prisoners comprise 3.3 percent of the total, and prisoners serving ten-year terms or more make up 30 percent.

A senior official with the autonomous region's higher people's court said that the past decade has been the best and most stable era in Tibetan history in the fields of social and economic development. To live a peaceful life is the common wish of the Tibetan people.

(People's Daily 05/20/2001)