Oct 08, 2009

Tibet: Woman from Tibet Gets 15-Year Jail Term, Whereabouts of 13 Others Remain Unknown


Active ImageA Tibetan woman who was unlawfully arrested while participating in a peaceful protest last year has just been sentenced to 15 years in prison while a group of others remains missing. 

 

 

Below is an article published by Tibet Custom :

 

According to reliable information received on 5 October 2009, a 54-year-old retired Tibetan doctor named Yeshi Choedon was given 15-year imprisonment by the Intermediate People's Court in Lhasa on charges of leaking out secrets to the outside world during the peaceful protests in March last year.

The court had announced in the verdict passed on 7 November last year that Yeshi Choedon's political rights would be also withheld for five years.

According to sources, she is currently undergoing labour in a prison near Lhasa.

She had worked at a clinic near Norbulingka before taking retirement few years back, following which she took her residence at Ramoche.

She was arrested without valid charges during the peaceful protests by Tibetans in Lhasa in March 2008.

Yeshi Choedon has been denied any right to meet her family members since then.

According to other reliable information, a group of unknown number of Tibetans were arrested during a Sangsol ceremony, an incense burning ceremony, in the capital Lhasa on the auspicious occasion of Saka-dawa (Saka-dawa is the month of Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death which is considered as an auspicious month)  on 7 June.

Many of those arrested were released, except a man named Soetop, aged 50. Seotop, who is a native of Khargang township in Jomda County in Chamdo Prefecture in the Tibet Autonomous Region.

The family members are concerned about the well-being of Soetop as he has not been allowed to meet anyone. The family members have no information about the detention centre in which Soetop is being held and nature of charges that are levelled against him.

Soetop used to own a shop in Lhasa before he was arrested.

Meanwhile, eleven monks of Pangsa monastery in Tibet are still missing following the peaceful protest in Tibet last year. The public security bureau police had arrested them during the March protests.

The monks have been identified as Khenpo Thubten Lungrig (abbot), Nyima Tenzin, Lobsang Tendhar, Pema, Lhakpa Tsering, Tenpa Thinlay, Lhakpa, Kangtsuk, Thupten Nyima, Gyatso and Kelsang.

Khenpo Thupten Lungrig, aged 58, participated in the protest in Meldo Gungkar, for which he was arrested by the Public Security Bureau. His whereabouts remain unknown since last one-and-half year.