By Tendar Tsering
DHARAMSHALA, September1: Lobsang Tenzin, a Tibetan political prisoner, jailed for the last 23 years and currently in Lhasa’s Chushul prison is being described in “critical health condition”.
According to a report by the Tibet Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), a rights group based in Dharamshala, Tenzin is suffering from severe diabetes due to which his eyesight has weakened sharply causing blindness at times.
“We are deeply concerned about Lobsang’s health and we strongly urge the Chinese government to immediately provide medical aide to him,” said the rights group in a release yesterday.
Lobsang Tenzin, the longest serving current Tibetan political prisoner was arrested in 1988 for participating in popular anti-China protests that later led to the declaration of martial law in Tibet under the then Tibet party secretary, Hu Jintao.
He was initially sentenced to death but was later commuted to life imprisonment as a result of what the Centre calls “strong international pressure on China”.
Tenzin, in his mid twenties was a student at Lhasa’s Tibet University when he was arrested.
Dukthen Kyi, a researcher at TCHRD said that over the years the Centre has often received reports of Tenzin’s worsening health.
“Since his imprisonment he has also suffered damaged kidney, causing numbness and extreme difficulty in standing,” said Kyi.
Even while in prison, Lobsang Tenzin, despite severe torture had continued his political activism.
In 1989, while he was still on death row, he wrote a letter supporting the pro-independence demonstrations and together with three fellow prisoners and some non-prisoners co-founded a group called Snow Lion Youth for Tibetan independence.
Later, in March 1991 when the then US ambassador to China, James Lilley visited Tibet, Tenzin and another inmate Tenpa Wangdrak tried to hand over a petition letter to the ambassador containing the names of all political prisoners and their conditions in the prison. The attempt was caught by the jail authorities which led to Lobsang Tenzin’s further torture and deterioration of health.
