Ngawang Gyurmey in a photo taken soon after his release from prison
Ngawang Gyurmey in a photo taken soon after his release from prison

As Tsenden Monastery reels under a severe crackdown with the number of cases of arbitrary detention peaking since 2013, a former monk of the monastery has been released after completing a 15-year prison sentence in Sog (Ch: Suo) County in Nagchu (Ch: Naqu) Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).

On 20 March this year, Ngawang Gyurmey, a well-known monk from the embattled Tsenden Monastery was released at about 1.30 pm (local time) after he had served a fixed prison term of 15 years in Chushur Prison in the outskirts of Lhasa city.

Family members of Ngawang Gyurmey are worried that he may not survive long due to poor health. They fear he will meet the same fate as Tenzin Choewang a fellow monk who was released but died after being bedridden for three years due to beatings and torture suffered in prison. Another monk Yeshi Tenzin had also died after three months of his release. Both were arrested with Ngawang Gyurmey in March 2000.

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Namgyal Tsultrim, a monk at Tsenden Monastery, has been detained for the third time since 2011.
Namgyal Tsultrim, a monk at Tsenden Monastery, has been detained for the third time since 2011.

Chinese police detained seven Tibetan monks from Tsenden Monastery in Sog (Ch: Suo) County in Nagchu (Ch: Naqu) Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). The monks were detained on 14 March, which coincided with the 2008 uprising anniversary when Tibetans protested against the Chinese government in Lhasa igniting widespread demonstrations in many parts of Tibet, according to information received by TCHRD.

The detained monks are identified as Namgyal Tsultrim, Lodoe Tenzin, Tsultrim Gojhey, Tsultrim Namgyal, Thabkey Lhundup, Jigme Tsultrim, and Jigme Drakpa. The police gave no reason for their detention. However, local Tibetans suspect that the monks were detained for sharing information and images related to incidents in Tibet. As of now, information regarding their condition, location of their detention and actual reason for their detention remain unknown.

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Photo: OHCHR
Photo: OHCHR

From 9-13 March, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) had a team of two researchers at regular session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC). Mr. Tenzin Nyinjey and Mr. John Gaudette, two senior researchers of the TCHRD participated at the ongoing UN Human Rights Council in Geneva under the name of International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR). This is the second consecutive HRC regular session that TCHRD has sent a team to. At the previous session in September 2014, TCHRD’s Executive Director, Ms. Tsering Tsomo, raised the situation in Tibet.

This year the TCHRD team built upon the work from September 2014. TCHRD’s team met with assistants for the Special Rapporteurs on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, the right to health, and the right to education. TCHRD also met with a representative from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). At all of these meetings TCHRD gave briefings on the situation in Tibet and provided digital and paper copies of TCHRD’s 2014 Annual Report and special reports on the right to health and the right to education. During the meetings the representatives of the Special Rapporteurs and the OHCHR said they would act on the situation in Tibet as permitted by the limits of their respective mandates. TCHRD also participated in a panel discussion with the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief on Friday.

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TCHRD’s senior researcher John Gaudette along with Professor Heiner Bielefeld, Derek Brett, and Dr Ojot Miru Ojulu at the side event organised by IFOR in Geneva.

Every year the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has three regular sessions. The session in March is usually the most important. The March session is attended by top government officials and more NGOs than the other sessions. To accommodate the large number of officials and participants, the March session is one week longer than the other regular sessions.

This year the March session began on 2 March and will last until 27 March. Given the ongoing and serious human rights violations in Tibet, TCHRD took the opportunity to send two senior researchers to the UNHRC to discuss the situation in Tibet. On Friday 13 March, the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) organized a side event on religious repression in East Asia. John Gaudette, a senior researcher at TCHRD, participated in the event as a panelist. The other panelists included the UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Freedom and Belief Professor Heiner Bielefeld and Derek Brett, IFOR’s representative to the UN in Geneva. The event was moderated by Dr Ojot Miru Ojulu from the Lutheran World Federation.

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Gedun Phuntsok
Gedun Phuntsok

A teenage Tibetan monk has become the latest target of China’s consistent and systematic attacks on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly in Tibet.

Gedun Phuntsok, 18, a monk from Kirti Monastery in Ngaba County was detained on 8 March for staging a peaceful protest calling for the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet and for “freedom and equality” in Ngaba (Ch: Aba) Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture (Sichuan Province), in the Tibetan province of Amdo.

The solo protest occurred at about 1.30 pm (local time) in Ngaba County town where on the main road, Gedun Phuntsok walked carrying a huge portrait of the Dalai Lama draped in a yellow khatag (Tibetan ceremonial scarf) on his head and shouted slogans such as “Let His Holiness the Dalai Lama return to Tibet” and “Freedom and equality for Tibet”, according to a source with close contacts in Tibet.

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Norchug died of self-immolation protest in Ngaba County
Norchug died of self-immolation protest in Ngaba County

A mother of three died of self-immolation protest and was cremated in rush for fear of the body’s seizure by local Chinese police in Tibet.

Norchug, 47, set herself alight in protest and died on the evening of 5 March which coincided with Chotrul Duechen (Butter Lamp Festival), one of the four Tibetan Buddhist festivals commemorating the events in the life of the Buddha, a source with contacts in Tibet informed TCHRD.

“Norchug staged the peaceful protest of self-immolation against repressive policies of the Chinese government and to call for religious and political freedoms for Tibetan people,” the source told TCHRD.

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On 4 March 2015 the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) released a special report on the right to health, entitled In the Shadow of Development: Maternal and Child Health in Crisis in Tibet. The report documents how a failing system of public healthcare has permitted extremely poor maternal and child health to persist in Tibet, despite drastic improvements in conditions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The report reveals that rural-living Tibetan women and children bear some of the highest risks in the PRC for birth-related illness and death, and finds that maternal and child health in Tibet is the worst in the PRC by a wide margin. In the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) in 2009, maternal and infant mortality were the highest in the PRC, 8 and 2.7 times higher than the national average, respectively. Severe child malnutrition, at 3.6%, was over twice as high. Life expectancy in the TAR was 8.5 years shorter than average and the lowest in the PRC.

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His Holiness the Dalai Lama's meeting with Mandela in 1996 in South Africa.  (Photo: ANC Archives)
His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s meeting with Mandela in 1996 in South Africa. (Photo: ANC Archives)

On 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Vester Prison. He spent 27 years in prison. Initially, Mandela was sentenced to five years in prison for leaving South Africa without a passport and inciting people to go on strike. He left South Africa to attend the Conference of the Pan-African Movement for East and Central Africa, he did not apply for a passport because he knew he would not be granted one by Apartheid South Africa. He later received a life sentence for sabotage. 

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Annual Report English CoverOn 7 February 2015 the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) released its 2014 Annual Report on human rights situation in Tibet. The report is available in English, Tibetan, and, for the first time, Chinese.

The Annual Report demonstrates that despite the promised reforms, the human rights situation in Tibet is continuing to deteriorate. In particular, the Annual Report highlights death in detention, collective punishment, and restrictions on the right to freedom of assembly and association. In all three areas the treatment of Tibetans has deteriorated substantially.

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Cover of "Ending Impunity: Crimes Against Humanity in Tibet", a special report released by TCHRD in September 2013
Cover of “Ending Impunity: Crimes Against Humanity in Tibet”, a special report released by TCHRD in September 2013

At the end of January the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act was introduced in the United States’ Senate (S.284) and House of Representatives (H.R.624). The bill builds upon the success of the Magnitsky Act and allows the president to create a list of people who are responsible for significant corruption, extrajudicial killings, torture, and other gross human rights abuses. People on the list will be banned from the United States and have their financial assets in the United States frozen. Human rights organizations have welcomed the groundbreaking legislation.

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