By Tenzin Tsering
Dharamsala, August 12 : Reports have emerged from Tibet that a wealthy Tibetan hotelier from Lhasa was sentenced to life imprisonment on June 26 this year in a secret trial with the details of the charges and conviction yet unclear, Tibetan sources reported to The Times.
Dorjee Tashi, an affluent Tibetan businessman well known for his opulent ‘Yak Hotel’ in Lhasa was formerly celebrated as “top 10 most outstanding young people” of Tibet by the Chinese authorities. The court also confiscated his entire property which is said to be worth 4.3 billion yuan (£430 million). He was arrested in March 2008 and held incommunicado since then. He is 37.
This is second in the series of sentences awarded to apolitical prosperous Tibetans known to us recently, after the arrest and imprisonment of a wealthy environmentalist Karma Samdup.
Dorjee Tashi was arrested a few weeks without charges after the March 2008 Uprising in Lhasa, that later spread to other parts of the restive Himalayan region controlled sicne 1959 by China. His elder brother was arrested a few months after him and sentenced to 6 years in prison.
The Lhasa Municipality Intermediate People’s Court convicted Dorjee Tashi for “illegal business operations” involving his Yak Hotel and gave no further explanation on whether his case was a political one, hence evoking a severe life imprisonment sentence.
Tibetan sources fill in the missing details by reporting that rumours of him donating to monasteries in the exile and to the Dalai Lama was discovered by the Chinese authorities.
Any expression of devotion to the Dalai Lama, whom China calls “a wolf in monk’s robes” is considered anti Chinese and often accused for “splittism” by China.
So far, no details about the brothers’ trial or sentencing have emerged in the Chinese state run media.
There is a speculation that Dorjee Tashi’s imprisonment must have been a political one, explaining the deep secrecy under which his trial and the verdict was accomplished in three days.
Rights groups and Tibet observers say it was the first time since the end of China’s chaotic Cultural Revolution in 1976 that there has been such a targeted campaign against Tibetan singers, artists, writers, and now successful businessmen who peacefully express their views.
“Many officials are taking advantage of the ‘strike hard’ period to take personal revenge and settle disputes,” AP quoted Woeser, a Beijing-based Tibetan poet and activist, was as saying. “Some of them are linked to politics, some not,” she added.
