Ethnic Minority Rights

Xinhua reported on December 30, 2004, that an official of the Sichuan Province High People’s Court said that the two-year reprieve of Tenzin Deleg’s death sentence will end on January 26, 2005. According to the report, the court sentenced the monk to death in 2003 for “financing and supporting a series of terrorist bombings and secession activities,” but granted a reprieve. In such circumstances, Chinese law requires that the death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment if a convicted person does not violate the law again during the reprieve. The warden of the prison where Tenzin Deleg is imprisoned has said that he has not committed any additional crimes and has abided by prison regulations. The report disclosed that Tenzin Deleg suffered from coronary heart disease and high blood pressure before he was detained, and that he has been receiving medication and quarterly checkups while in prison.

CECC Comment

On January 13, 2005, the European Parliament adopted provisional wording of joint resolution expressing support for the rule of law and calling on China’s government to commute Tenzin Deleg’s reprieved death sentence. The resolution welcomed "the statement by the Chinese authorities according to which anyone who is sentenced to death with a suspension of execution and commits no crime of intent during the period of suspension shall have their punishment commuted to life imprisonment on the expiration of the two-year period." The reprieve will expire on January 26. The EU parliament's daily press summary reported that the resolution was adopted with 99 votes in favor, two opposed, and seven abstentions.

Tibet Information Network (TIN) has obtained new information about sentence reductions and releases from prison for several Tibetan political prisoners. According to the TIN report, the Dui Hua Foundation of San Francisco recently received an unprecedented amount of prisoner information from the Chinese government in response to longstanding requests. The Chinese response involved information about individuals who have been sentenced for crimes of counterrevolution or endangering state security. The response includes information about 13 Tibetans. John Kamm, the Executive Director of Dui Hua, stressed that not only did Chinese officials provide information about prisoners in reply to formal requests from other governments, but they also profferred information about prisoners who had previously been unknown.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on February 13 that five monks of Dragkar Traldzong Monastery in Qinghai province have been sentenced to prison terms of two to three years, "apparently for publishing politically sensitive poems." The abbot, Tashi Gyaltsen, was reportedly one of those imprisoned. The monks were detained in mid-January 2005 and sentenced about three weeks later, according to RFA’s source, who asked not to be named. The monks were involved in producing a monastic newsletter that contained a poem that officials may have interpreted as praising two monks from the same monastery who were jailed in mid-2002 for pro-independence activity.

Chinese police detained a Tibetan monk from one of the most important Buddhist sites in Qinghai province in mid-May 2005, according to a June 3 report by Radio Free Asia (RFA). Jigme Dasang (or Dazang), honored six times as a "Three Best Student" (san hao xuesheng), was in a prayer meeting at Kumbum Monastery when police took him into detention. A Huangzhong County Public Security Bureau spokesman confirmed the detention to RFA. Unnamed sources told RFA that anti-government posters appeared in the monastery and that monks feared there may be more detentions. Jigme Dasang is from Xinghai county, where five Tibetan monks were detained earlier this year, according to another RFA report.

About 70 Tibetans, many recent college graduates, protested in mid-July outside government offices in the Qinghai provincial capital of Xining, according to a July 14 report by Radio Free Asia (RFA). The Tibetans, who reside in Xunhua Salar Autonomous County in Haidong prefecture, claimed that local authorities discriminate against Tibetans in hiring to fill government jobs and favor ethnic Han and Salar applicants. Police reportedly beat and detained eight protestors, including "ringleader" Dukar Kyab, and ordered the rest to return home on July 13. County officials contacted by telephone refused to comment to RFA about the protests or the eight "missing" Tibetans and denied that they had been arrested.

An official of the Shigatse (Rikaze) Prefecture Intermediate People's Court, located in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), acknowledged that during the past decade the court sentenced more than 20 Tibetans to between one and five years imprisonment for offenses that included possessing photos of the Dalai Lama, according to a September 1 Radio Free Asia (RFA) report. The official, who declined to be identified, asserted the court's authority to "sentence any individual who commits reactionary actions." He confirmed an RFA report on August 11 that an 18-year-old Tibetan had been imprisoned in 2001 for bringing religious material featuring the Dalai Lama's photo with him when he returned from India to his family home in Gansu province.

Three Tibetans who attempted to carry photographs of the Dalai Lama and audio tapes of his religious teachings from Nepal into the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) were sentenced to imprisonment in July 2001, according to a Radio Free Asia (RFA) report on August 11. The Shigatse (Rikaze) Intermediate People's Court sentenced two of the men, Lungtog and Tennam, to four years imprisonment. The third man, identified by the pseudonym Jigme, was sentenced to two years imprisonment and recounted his experience to RFA after he fled the TAR. He showed RFA a copy of the official court document sentencing the men for illegally crossing the border into China and "instigation to split the country."