On the 38th International day of the victims of enforced disappearances, TCHRD remembers all victims of enforced disappearance inside Tibet and calls on China to ratify the Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearances (Convention).
The Communist Party of China’s Central Propaganda Department announced the launch of a campaign to crack down on illegal online activities and fake news.
Tibetan political prisoner Tsultrim Gyatso has become eligible for release in November 2026 after his life sentence was commuted for the second time by the Intermediate People’s Court of Tianshui City in April last year, reported the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders on 17 July. The Tianshui court approved a 6-month sentence reduction claiming that Gyatso had “pleaded guilty, [showed]…
The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) is deeply concerned over the health condition of Tsegon Gyal, a prominent Tibetan political prisoner who was released last December after completing a three-year prison term at Dongchuan prison (西宁市东川监狱) in Xining, Qinghai Province, in the Tibetan province of Amdo.
The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) launched today the #WhyProtest digital campaign to promote and protect the right to freedom of peaceful assembly or the right to protest. The right to protest is universally recognised as a fundamental human right that is crucial to creating a tolerant and pluralistic society in which groups with different beliefs, practices, or policies can coexist peacefully. This fundamental right is necessary for the exercise of other human rights.
Tashi Rabten is a Tibetan writer and poet in the Tibetan province of Amdo, present-day Sichuan Province. He was released last year in March after serving a four-year sentence at Mianyang Prison in Sichuan. He was a student at the North-West University for Nationalities and wrote for the now-banned Tibetan language journal Shar Dungri (‘Eastern Conch Mountain’) and also published Trag-yig (‘Blood Letters’), a compilation of his poems, notes and writings on the situation in Tibet following the 2008 protests.
In a recent conversation that is being circulated on various social media sites, Tashi Rabten talks about his experiences as a university student and political prisoner, and his newfound faith in the power of poetry.
A documentary film on the state of the freedom of expression in Tibet will premiere at the ‘Human Rights Human Wrongs’ (‘HRHW’) film festival in Oslo, Norway this week marking the launch of the international leg of the ‘Banned Expression: Support Free Speech in Tibet’ campaign.
The documentary film titled ‘Banned Expression in Tibet’ is produced by Voice of Tibet (VOT) radio service. The first screening of the documentary will be held at the “HRHW” film festival, a one of its kind film festival in the Scandinavia, organized by the Oslo Dokumentarkino (Oslo Documentary Cinema) in collaboration with many human rights organizations and institutions.
‘Banned Expression: Support Free Speech in Tibet’ is an awareness campaign focussing on the Right to Freedom of Opinion, Expression and Information in Tibet.
Over a hundred Tibetan writers, poets, artists, intellectuals and cultural figures have been arrested, tortured and imprisoned since the 2008 uprising in Tibet. By daring to refute China’s official narrative of events surrounding the 2008 Uprising, these courageous Tibetans represent a significant new challenge to the Chinese authorities.
China is implementing mass surveillance and propaganda campaigns under the rubric of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s “mass line” policy in Tibet. New regulations on the internet and phone use have been implemented since 2011 to block information and censor communication. Book and journals are banned; websites shut down and online contents deleted and censored in real time by armies of Chinese government censors. China has vowed again to block all images, information and teachings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Tibet by setting “nets in the sky” and “traps on the ground” .
The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) is pleased to announce the release of Ancestors’ Tomb, a book written by a Tibetan university student in Ngaba in the Tibetan province of Amdo.
Mar Jang-nyug (pseudonym) is a Tibetan writer who was born and brought up in Marong village of Ngaba in the Tibetan province of Amdo. Ancestors’ Tomb reveals the oppressive nature of Chinese rule in Tibet. With his writings, Mar Jang-nyug bears witness to the suffering and pain endured by Tibetans and exposes the authoritarian workings of the Chinese government.
Through an array of prose and poetry, the book describes the dictatorial nature of the Chinese government, its relentless marginalization of Tibetan language and culture, destruction of environment through unrestricted deforestation and mining and its ever-increasing violations of human rights.
A popular Tibetan writer and four others have been sentenced to prison early this month by Chinese authorities in Nyagchu (Ch: Yajiang) County in Kardze (Ch: Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province.
On 1 August 2013, the County People’s Court in Nyagchu County sentenced the writer, Gangkye Drupa Kyab, to five years and six months in prison for alleged political activities. Four other Tibetan men were also sentenced. Samdup received five years’ prison term while Sheygyal and Yudrang each were sentenced to two years. Drensel received three years prison sentence, according to information obtained by Tibet Express, an exile Tibetan newspaper.
All of them were sentenced for allegedly being members of a secret political group called “Marshog Ngogol Tsogpa” (Anti-Communist Party Association). Both Samdup, 32, and Yudrang were detained on 13 June 2012.
Mar Jang-nyug (pseudonym) is a Tibetan writer born and brought up in Marong village of Ngaba in the Tibetan province of Amdo. TCHRD presents another translated and edited essay from the author’s forthcoming book, Ancestors’ Tomb. This essay was written on 25 March 2012, a few months after the death of the author’s mother.
Ancestors’ Tomb is replete with accounts of unaddressed grievances and unfulfilled aspirations, at once personal and yet political, as is demonstrated by the tortured body of the author’s mother and her legacy to her son of a wounded heart, both bearing witness to brutalities bygone and present.
The invoking of memories about Ngaba during the nascent stages of Chinese rule is telling in that it gives a historical context – resonant with the underlying Buddhist theme of cause and effect – to the spate of self-immolation protests in Tibet in recent years.