“Chinese authorities should immediately release Tibetan monks and other peaceful critics arbitrarily imprisoned since the March 2008 protests across the Tibetan plateau” says Human Rights Watch (HRW) in their report entitled China: Free Tibetans Unjustly Imprisoned, New Compendium of About 80 Long-Term Cases. The report, published on May 21, has shed new light on the cases of wrongfully imprisoned Tibetans allegedly involved with the 2008 Lhasa protests. Since that dissent broke out Human Rights Watch, a non-government organisation based in New York, has uncovered about 80 cases of monks who have been prosecuted and sentenced to long term imprisonment. The report cites the difficulties of obtaining information: “Information about sentences from Tibetan areas is tightly restricted, and people who report detentions and prosecutions to others abroad are themselves at risk of arrest”.
Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said, “Tibetans who did nothing more than call peacefully for their human rights to be respected have been unjustly sentenced to long prison terms. The Chinese authorities should immediately free these prisoners.”
Images of some of the 80 Tibetans who were sentenced to long prison terms including life in prison and the death penalty
Photo: HRW
The report goes on to give details of the treatment of imprisoned people, saying they are held without due process and that there are “serious concerns for the health of many of these prisoners, due to severe physical abuse and denial of medical care in custody”. In many cases, says HRW, “There has been no information regarding some of the prisoners’ whereabouts, wellbeing, or charges for more than a decade”.
The Central Tibetan Administration says the accused are “human rights defenders, prominent environmentalists, religious figures, monks, and professionals, amongst others, with an average sentence term of roughly 13 years, excluding life sentences (15) and death sentences (7)”. The report on their website, tibet.net, mentions the three former political prisoners who have died within the last two months, all of whom were tortured in prison and whose ill health and subsequent death can be attributed to their treatment in prison. tibet.net states, “Hundreds of Tibetans continue to be arbitrarily detained, unjustly jailed and mistreated in prisons for merely exercising their freedom of expression and demanding the Chinese authorities of their rights and freedom in Tibet”.
The HRW report lists the information that HRW has been able to verify about the 80 cases which, they say, “involve Tibetan Buddhist monks and others who were sentenced to long prison terms, including life in prison and the death penalty”. In some cases charges are unknown, but a vast majority are nonviolent political activity deemed to be “endangering state security”. The Human Rights Watch compilation of Tibetan political prisoners “relies on reports received from local sources despite the government’s censorship and intimidation”.
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