Beijing, Nov 13 (EFE).– Tibetan monks and nuns are receiving counterespionage instruction from the Chinese government, a program aimed at combating the Tibetan independence movement and counteracting the influence of the exiled Dalai Lama, the official daily Global Times reported Friday.

Twenty-two monks and nuns from three area temples attended a three-hour-long class in Nyingchi, a city in the southeastern part of the Tibet region, near the Sino-Indian border, where they were taught how to comply with the counterespionage law and informed of the consequences of violating it, the daily said.

The law, enacted in November of last year, targets organizations or persons who carry out, instigate or support espionage-related activities in the country.

A Nyingchi official, Cui Shixin, told the Global Times that the classes were meant to safeguard national unity and help the monks distinguish “right from wrong.”

Another official, identified only by his surname Chen, explained that such “legal education” has been imparted on other occasions in temples and religious sites in Nyingchi city.

That city in southeastern Tibet has a number of military posts and is close to the border with India, which further explains the special attention Beijing is paying to that region.

The director of the Modern Institute of the China Tibetology Research Center, Lian Xiangmin, said these classes could be aimed at “countering” alleged spying activities by Dalai Lama’s “government-in-exile.”

Tibet, along with the Xinjiang region in northwestern China, is one of China’s ethnic powder kegs, with the country’s Communist authorities accusing pro-independence Tibetans, led by the Dalai Lama, in exile in India since 1959, of creating tensions in the province.

Tibetans, for their part, denounce the restrictions on their religion and culture and the strong control exercised by Beijing over all Chinese regions they inhabit. EFE