Dharamsala, January 13 – A Tibetan political prisoner — serving a 17 year-long sentence in a prison near the capital Lhasa — is on the verge of death after being subjected to torture by jail authorities, according to the exile Tibetan government’s official website.
Jigme Gyatso was sentenced along with several others in 1996 by the Lhasa Intermediate People’s Court after being booked for “counter revolutionary activities”. Jigme was sent to Drachi prison where he underwent “hard manual labour”.
While in prison, Jigme raised slogans for the Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama’s long life leading to an extension of his sentence by two more years. Despite the sentence extension, Jigme remained defiant and was continuously tortured and beaten up “rendering him physically very weak”.
Beatings and torture continued after he was shifted to Chusul prison.
Jigme was born in 1961 in Sangchu in Tibet’s Amdo Province.
He lived in Lhasa with his mother who passed away two years after his arrest.
