Contact is taking a holiday!

Tibetan monks Thubpa, Lobsang Dorje, and Lobsang Thamke are shown left to right in undated photo.
Photo: RFA

The details of detention of three monks in the Tibetan province of Amdo reached Tibetan sources in exile. Dharamsala based, Kirti Monastery representative, Kanyag Tsering, notified the media on August 14 that the monks had been arrested by the Chinese authorities at separate times in 2017 and 2018.One was sentenced to four years imprisonment; the other two are held incommunicado and are believed not to have been sentenced yet. For all three of them, the reasons for their current detention, their whereabouts and their health conditions remain unknown.

Lobsang Thamkhe, 37, a monk from Kirti monastery, was detained in 2018 and has now been sentenced to four years in prison on July 30. According to Radio Free Asia, no details are available regarding what he was charged with and where he is now imprisoned. Lobsang Thamkhe had previously graduated from the Buddhist Youth School that was formerly attached to Kirti Monastery before being closed by the county’s jurisdiction in 2002. At the time of his arrest, he was enrolled at the Dialectics College at his monastery where he was pursuing the Uma (Madhyamika/Middle Way) course.

Two other monks from Ngaba have gone missing after being taken into custody by the Chinese police.Kirti Monastery Monk, LobsangDorjee, 36, detained on unknown charges sometime in August 2018, is yet to be sentenced. He had earlier served three years in prison in 2011 for taking part in a protest.

Thubpa, 32, from Tutse Monastery in Ngaba, was taken away from his residence at night towards the end of 2017. He had previously served an18-month sentence in 2008 for shouting political slogans and burning a Chinese flag in protest against the Chinese rule. Thubpa’s father, Kalsang, was also arrested and imprisoned for shouting political slogans in March 2011,when a monk named Phuntsok self-immolated near Kirti Monastery.

Information is frequently delayed from reaching foreign news outlets, and other outside contacts, due to strict restrictions, surveillance and blockage of information channels by the Chinese authorities. In recent years, the areas of Ngaba and nearby Kirti Monastery have been the scene of various self-immolations and other protests calling for Tibetan freedom and the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.