Dharamshala, India — A Tibetan monk who went missing more than one year after his arbitrary arrest in the occupied territory of eastern Tibet, has been sentenced to a three-year jail term on unknown charges.
Lobsang Dorjee, a 36-yr-old monk from Kirti Monastery in Ngaba County (Ch: Aba Prefecture, Sichuan Province), eastern Tibet, was sentenced to 3 years’ in prison by a Chinese Intermediate People’s Court, according to a TPI source, citing sources inside Tibet.
'Dorjee’s whereabouts and condition remained unknown since his arbitrary arrest in his room at Kirti Monastery in Ngaba County of eastern Tibet, in mid-July 2018,' monks from India-based Kirti Monastery, Kanyag Tsering and Lobsang Yeshe, citing sources in Tibet.
Details about the charges are not immediately available making it difficult to conclude whether his family members and relatives were informed about his sentence. 'It is unknown why he was given a three-year prison sentence, although they have heard it may be linked to his contacts with people outside Tibet,' the exile monks told TPI, citing local sources in Tibet.
Chinese authorities have steadily tightened control to blocking information flow and preventing news about Tibet from reaching the outside world. As a result, Tibetans in Tibet are given harsh and arbitrary jail sentences for simply sharing even fragments of news with other Tibetans.
Dorje was initially detained on May 23, 2008, and later sentenced to two years in prison,' said the India based monks and they have circulated an image that was taken in Dorrje's previous prison. He is the son of Sangrin from the Chukle Gabma area of Ngaba County of eastern Tibet.
"It is a common practice of torturing Tibetan political prisoners especially while they are in incommunicado detention," the UN, EU, and Human Rights Desk of the Tibetan government in-Exile said, adding: "former political prisoners are especially in a vulnerable position as they are under continuous surveillance by the authorities and are picked up from their residence at odd hours on mere suspicions as was the case with Lobsang Dorjee."
The communist-totalitarian state of China began their invasion of Tibet in 1949, reaching complete occupation of the country in 1959. Since that time, more than 1.2 million people, 20% of the nation's population of six million, have died as a direct result of China's invasion and occupation. In addition, over 99% of Tibet's six thousand religious monasteries, temples, and shrines, have been looted or decimated resulting in the destruction of hundreds of thousands of sacred Buddhist scriptures.
Until 1949, Tibet was an independent Buddhist nation in the Himalayas which had little contact with the rest of the world. It existed as a rich cultural storehouse of the Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings of Buddhism. Religion was a unifying theme among the Tibetans -- as was their own language, literature, art, and world view developed by living at high altitudes, under harsh conditions, in a balance with their environment.