Chinese authorities are arresting and torturing Tibetans despite the end of martial law in Tibet, the Dalai Lama said Wednesday. The Nobel prize winner and spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists was in New York to help launch a yearlong campaign to raise public awareness of Tibetan culture and call attention to China's rule over his homeland. In March 1989, civil strife rocked Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and martial law was imposed for a year. The Public Security Bureau in Tibet later said 387 Lhasa citizens died in the anti-Chinese riots. Most of them were Tibetans but some security forces also were killed, the bureau said. Tibetans claim more than 450 of their people were killed. Martial law was lifted in March, but the Dalai Lama told reporters ``the actual situation has not at all improved.'' ``The military uniformed personnel changed their clothes to police uniforms and plainclothes. ... Incidents of arrest and torture, these also continue,'' said the Dalai Lama, who won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership of his people. He said he feared that ``in 15 years, if present conditions don't change, the Tibetan community will become insignificant in its own land,'' now a province of China. About 6 million Tibetans still live in their homeland, but they are outnumbered by Chinese even in Tibet. ``After 40 years of Chinese occupation, much of Tibet's civilization has been destroyed,'' the Dalai Lama said. Actor Richard Gere, who is the president of Tibet House in New York, introduced the Dalai Lama at a news conference to begin the Year of Tibet, a series of art exhibits and cultural events to promote public awareness of Tibetan culture. ``Many of my friends find Tibetan culture quite healthy, quite useful,'' said the Dalai Lama, who then chuckled and added, ``But I don't know.'' Many of his remarks were sprinkled with self-deprecating humor. The Year of Tibet opens with a show of more than 150 works of Tibetan art, including 31 from the Hermitage collection in Leningrad, in April 1991 at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. It moves to New York in October 1991.
