DHARAMSALA, September 30 – A Tibetan writer from Tibet’s Ngaba region jailed in 2010 was released today from Mianyang prison near Chengdu, provincial capital of Sichuan. Joleb Dawa, the editor of ‘Dus-rab kyi nga’ (This Century’s Self) journal completed his sentence of three years’ imprisonment today. Several Tibetans including his family members welcomed him with Khatag (Traditional Tibetan well-wishing scarf).
Dawa, 41, was arrested in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, on October 1, 2010. He was 38 at the time of his arrest. The Barkham (Ch: Ma’erkang) Intermediate People’s Court in Ngaba Prefecture had passed the sentence on him on 29 October 2011.
A native of Ngaba’s Joleb village, Dawa was a teacher at a Tibetan school in Ngaba, and also edited the journal which is linked to his arrest as two other Tibetans associated with the journal were also arrested around that time. Though exact charges against him is not known the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) said he was jailed on “trumped up charges of separatism.”
In 2006, Dawa was held for about a month at a detention center in Ngaba for his alleged role in leading a massive drive to burn animal skins and fur in the region after the exiled Tibetan leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama spoke against the use of animal skins and fur during a religious gathering in Amravati, India.
Dawa, a father of two, was again arrested on March 16, 2008, and detained for the following few months. Chinese police ransacked a small bookshop cum DVD rental store run by his wife Zhamla and took away his personal computer among other belongings.
The TCHRD says many Tibetans continue to be unlawfully charged with threatening the security of the Chinese nation, sharing ‘secrets’ of Chinese government with outsiders, and for engaging in ‘separatist’ activities. These charges which come under ‘national security crimes’ make it easy for the secret police to detain people for months without informing their family members, according to the Tibetan right group.
