Reports from Tibet indicate that the large-scale political re-education campaigns, which the Chinese authorities have been implementing in Lithang county since summer 2007, have begun to spread across Kardze (Chin: Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (TAP) and into the neighbouring areas to involve the whole area that Tibetans traditionally refer to as Kham. This area, which is spread between the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and Sichuan province, has been the most restive since the advent of Chinese rule over Tibet in the 1950s.

Sources from Tibet report that the local authorities of Kardze TAP and the People's Armed Police (PAP) have recently started implementing a new directive, allegedly issued from Beijing, and have launched a patriotic re-education campaign in the prefecture. The new directive is said to order the expulsion from monasteries of all monks and nuns below the age of eighteen, and those who have visited India. Furthermore, the monastic administrations of all monasteries in the region are compelled to inform the local authorities in advance about programmes and activities being conducted by them. Those opposing the patriotic re-education campaign are to be handed over to the PAP.

The Public Security Bureau (PSB) and the PAP have also been instructed to interrogate Tibetans from all eighteen counties in Kardze TAP who attended the Kalachakra ceremony held by the Dalai Lama in southern India in January 2006. Following a sermon conducted by the Dalai Lama condemning the use of wildlife products, Tibetans all over Tibet started to publicly burn their fur garments.

Sources said: "The directive re-issues orders banning the display of photographs of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama by [private] households", and bars party cadres from maintaining domestic shrines or altars, and visiting India for religious purposes and schooling for their children. Failure to comply with these orders, they report, will result in punishments ranging from salary deduction to dismissal from employment.