DHARAMSHALA, September 12: A Tibetan political prisoner who was released last year from a Chinese prison after serving three years, is reported to be in poor health with multiple health complications.
Chime Gonpo, 41 was detained on March 18, 2008 for staging a peaceful protest against the Chinese government in Karzez, eastern Tibet. Minutes after Gonpo along with ten other Tibetans began calling for the return of the Dalai Lama and freedom in Tibet, local armed police arrived and started beating the protesters before taking them away.
According to the Dharamshala based rights group Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, Gonpo’s relatives began to notice “drastic changes” in his health soon after he was released in March last year.
He began to “lose weight and his body turned darker day by day,” TCHRD quoted Gonpo’s niece Nyidon, who recently escaped to India, as saying.
When hospitals in the region failed to diagnose Gonpo’s condition, his family took him to a hospital in Beijing where doctors declared he was suffering from hepatitis and kidney disease.
Nyidon told TCHRD that her family suspects the failing health of her Uncle, who used to be a healthy and energetic man before his arrest, was due to the “beatings and tortures he suffered during his three year imprisonment.”
Even as Gonpo is recuperating at his home, the local police continue to make weekly visits to interrogate him and to check whether he has left without their knowledge, TCHRD said.
Gonpo’s family continues to be under surveillance of security officials and their movements and activities are constantly monitored and controlled.
“It is normal for family members and relatives of a former or current political prisoner to face many hardships at the hands of the police and other government officials,” Nyidon told TCHRD.
Nyidon also recalls names of a few others who were sentenced along with her Uncle Gonpo, including Nyiga, 50 from Sershul and Goga, 45 from Kardze, who were sentenced to eight and three years respectively.
In January 2012, Lobsang Khedup, 39, a monk from the Kirti monastery was released after serving one year of his three-year sentence upon suffering waist-down paralysis due to torture and indiscriminate beatings by Chinese prison guards. The prison guards ascertained that he had minimal chances of recovery.
Late last year, Norlha Ashagtsang, a political prisoner passed away as a result of torture suffered in Chinese detention. He succumbed to his injuries sustained during prolonged torture sessions in Lhasa just weeks after his released on medical parole.
London based Free Tibet notes that in Tibet “it is common practice for seriously or terminally injured prisoners to be released in order to reduce the number of deaths in detention.”
