DHARAMSHALA, JUNE 27: Amid growing concerns over the health of a Tibetan Buddhist leader who was arrested in December last year Chinese authorities have told his lawyer that the charges against his client have been changed from ‘endangering national security’ to ‘illegal harboring’ and ‘divulging state secrets’.
According to Beijing based Tibetan writer Tsering Woser, Khenpo’s lawyer Tang Tianhao who sought bail for his client on medical grounds was told by the authorities that they could continue to detain him “because this was a major case involving stability maintenance they would not allow him to be released.”
Exile sources say that Khenpo Karma Tsewang, known better as Khenpo Kartse, is suffering from severe liver complications.
Woser wrote on her blog on June 24 that Khenpo’s lawyer Tang who met Khenpo in February this year had been refused permission to see Khenpo last month and was threatened to drop the case.
According to Khenpo’s lawyer, the authorities accuse Khenpo of harboring monks who had escaped from Karma Monastery in Chamdo following the self-immolation protest by Tenzin Phuntsog on Dec. 1, 2011. The Chinese law enforcement authorities also allege that Khenpo had given information about the self-immolation to exile sources.
Meanwhile, there has been a feeling of distress and worry in Nangchen, Khenpo’s hometown where over 400 Tibetans including 60 monks from his monastery sat on a silent sit-in-protest in front of the County detention center in January.
“No one should suffer because of me, I appeal fellow monks to concentrate on your routine monastic education. I also request everyone to remain calm and not take any steps in haste,” Khenpo Kartse wrote in a letter he sent from Chamdo after his arrest.
Khenpo Kartse is known among Tibetans in the region for his environmental activism, disaster relief work, and commitment to the preservation of Tibetan language and culture.
The Amnesty International had earlier in January launched a campaign for the release of Khenpo Kartse.
