On the eve of Christmas, Chinese authorities charged a prominent former Tibetan political prisoner of ‘inciting to split the country’ (煽动分裂国家罪) after holding him incommunicado for more than two weeks at Kangtsa (Ch: Gangcha) County Detention Centre in Tsojang (Ch: Haibei) ‘Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture’ (TAP) in Qinghai Province, in the Tibetan province of Amdo.
Tsegon Gyal, 53, has been arbitrarily detained on unknown charges early this month by the local State Security Bureau officers in Tsojang (Ch: Haibei) ‘Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture’ (TAP) in Qinghai Province. His family members including his wife, daughter, and aging parents have not been allowed to meet him.
The relentless crackdown on self-immolation protests in Tibet continued when Chinese authorities sentenced two Tibetan monks to three years in prison for holding religious rituals and prayer services for a Tibetan man who died of self-immolation protest in November last year in Kangtsa Township in Yadzi (Ch: Xunhua) Salar Autonomous County in Tsoshar (Ch: Haidong) Prefecture, Qinghai Province. The Chinese authorities deemed this exercise of the monks’ fundamental rights criminal pursuant to a 2012 guideline on handling self-immolations.
Wangchen Norbu, 25, died during a self-immolation protest on 19 November last year. As he burned, Wangchen Norbu called for an end to Chinese repression and demanded the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet, freedom in Tibet, and the release of the 11th Panchen Lama, and all the Tibetan political prisoners.