Gansu Court Sentences Five Tibetan Monks and Nuns for Protest Posters

A court in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (TAP), Gansu province, sentenced five Tibetan monks and nuns in late January to up to three years of imprisonment for displaying and distributing letter-sized posters critical of the Chinese government in 2005, according to a series of reports that emerged beginning in July 2005. Public security officials detained the monks and nuns on May 22, 2005, in Xiahe county, the location of Labrang Tashikhyil Monastery and Gedun Tengyeling Nunnery, where the monks and nuns studied. A January 30 "urgent campaign" document posted on the Web site of the London-based Free Tibet Campaign (FTC) provides the most detailed account available. Reuters (reprinted in the Web site of the New York Times) and the Associated Press (AP, reprinted on the Web site of the INQ7 Network) reported the story on February 6 and 7, respectively, citing FTC as the source.

Authorities suspected that monks Dargyal Gyatso and Jamyang Samdrub of Labrang Tashikhyil Monastery, and nuns Choekyi Drolma, Tamdrin Tsomo, and Yonten Drolma of Gedun Tengyeling Nunnery, circulated the posters and pasted them up in locations in and near Xiahe, including on the gate of the Public Security Bureau (PSB) compound and in the monastery, as well as in more distant locations in Gannan prefecture and Qinghai province. Descriptions of their contents have varied. In July 2005, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) issued the first report of the detentions, saying that the posters called for "freedom in Tibet." In December 2005, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported that at least one of the posters called on the Chinese government to start a dialogue with the Dalai Lama. The February Reuters and AP reports added that the posters said China should not host the Olympics until the Tibet question is peacefully resolved. FTC is currently conducting a campaign focused on the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

An unspecified Gannan court sentenced nuns Choekyi Drolma and Tamdrin Tsomo, and monk Dargyal Gyatso, to 3 years imprisonment, and nun Yonten Drolma and monk Jamyang Samdrub to 18 months imprisonment, according to FTC. A Xiahe County People's Court official confirmed that the monks and nuns were sentenced to imprisonment shortly before Chinese New Year (January 29 in 2006), according to a February 7 Agence France-Presse (AFP) report, but it is unlikely that the county court handled the case. Article 20(1) of the Criminal Procedure Law stipulates that People's Intermediate Courts have jurisdiction as courts of first instance over crimes of "endangering state security." Gannan's intermediate court is located in Hezuo, the prefectural capital. No details about the charges against the monks and nuns are available, but Tibetans in similar cases have sometimes been charged with "inciting splittism," a crime that endangers state security under Article 103 of China's Criminal Law. All of the monks and nuns are in their twenties and are from Tibetan autonomous prefectures in Qinghai province, according to FTC. Current information about their place of imprisonment is not available.

Choekyi Drolma, Tamdrin Tsomo, and Yonten Drolma are the only Tibetan nuns currently confirmed to be detained or imprisoned in China, according to information available in the CECC Political Prisoner Database (PPD). They are the only nuns recorded in the PPD who have been detained or imprisoned in Gansu province since the current period of Tibetan political activism began in 1987. Of the 351 Tibetan nuns detained or imprisoned in China since 1987, according to the PPD, all but 5 were held in PSB detention centers, reeducation through labor (RETL) centers, and prisons located in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). More than half (187) served prison sentences in Lhasa's TAR Prison. The only female Tibetan political prisoner currently known to be imprisoned in TAR Prison is Nyima Choedron, a co-director of a Lhasa children's home who is serving a sentence for splittism that is expected to expire in February 2007. Bangri Tsamtrul Rinpoche, her husband and director of the home, is serving a life sentence for splittism. Security officials detained them in August 1999 and the Lhasa Municipal Intermediate People's Court sentenced them in September 2000.

See Section III(d) - "Freedom of Religion," Religious Freedom for Tibetan Buddhists, and Section VI - "Tibet," Tibetan Culture and Human Rights, of the CECC 2005 Annual Report for more information on religious practice and the political imprisonment of Tibetans.