The Dalai Lama's claim of cultural genocide in Tibet is untenable in front of such facts as the use of the Tibetan language and the compilation of Tibetan books, says Dainzin Qoizhag, a living Buddha of the Kagyudpa Sect of Tibetan Buddhism.

"When I was 11, I began to work as a teacher in such areas as Zhanang and Nagarze counties, because there were few educated people in the whole Tibet in the past," says Dainzin Qoizhag, also vice chairman of the Standing Committee of Tibet Autonomous Region's People's Congress.

"At that time, except for some religious books in big noble families,there were no storybooks about Tibet at all," said the living buddha. "But now, there are all kinds of books. And all kinds of culture and arts are booming."

In March, the Dalai Lama told a press conference that "somewhere cultural genocide is taking place."

Refuting the claim, the living buddha says to protect the cultural heritage of the Tibetan ethnic group, the region has published 261 volumes of ancient Tibetan books in recent years.

Born in 1951 and a witness of Tibet's development in the past 50 or more years, the living buddha says in the past some people chose to be nuns or monks either to avoid corvee or for subsistence.

Currently the country's law protects the freedom of religion of civilians and their legal religious activities, he says.

"Nowadays, in the streets or alleys of Lhasa, you can see religious believers everywhere who turn wheels of the sutra and recite their religious texts."

(Xinhua April 27, 2008)