DHARAMSHALA, July 19: A Tibet monk, missing for the past eight months, was finally traced after he was produced in a Chinese court in eastern Tibet and sentenced to three years in prison on unknown charges.
Lodoe, a 36-year-old monk from the Kirti Monastery in the beleaguered Ngaba region of eastern Tibet was arrested on October 20 last year and had not been heard off since.
Dharamshala based rights group, Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, in a release today cited sources as saying that family members and relatives of Lodoe were neither informed nor invited to witness the trial that had supposedly taken place prior to the sentencing early July by an Intermediate People's Court in Barkham.
In another instance of arbitrary arrest and disappearance, Lobsang Tsering, a 21-year-old monk of the Kirti Monastery was arrested on June 26 from his monastery by Public Security Bureau personnel from Ngaba Prefecture.
“Since his arrest, Lobsang's family and relatives have approached relevant security offices in the region enquiring about his whereabouts and condition but to no avail,” TCHRD said. “It is not known on what charges Lobsang Tsering was arrested and where he is being held and in what condition.”
With over 2500 monks, the Kirti Monastery is one of the largest seats of learning inside Tibet.
Since Tapey, a Kirti monk set himself on fire demanding freedom in Tibet and the return of the Dalai Lama from exile in February 2009, more than 15 monks and former monks from the monastery have self-immolated.
The monastery remains under heavy military blockade with armed soldiers strictly controlling the movement of the monks. Hundreds of monks from the monastery have been disappeared, while many have been sentenced to lengthy jail terms on charges of “subversion”.
Writing on her blog, Woeser, the Beijing based Tibetan writer, last year noted that the monks in the monastery were divided into four groups and armed police and cadres supervised every single person.
“In fact, the word “supervise” is too moderate; they monitored them, talked to them insistently and forced them to obey. If someone did not obey, well, the outcome would be very simple, they would brutally start beating them and then make them disappear; as for where they would disappear to, whether to prison or some other inhuman world, we do not know, we only know that up to now, hundreds of monks have been arrested.”
Source: Phayul.com
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