Dharamsala, November 6: Three Tibetan writers detained earlier this year by Chinese authorities have been tried on charges of “inciting activities to split the nation,” a media report said, citing sources in Tibet as saying.
The three writers, identified as Jangtse Donkho, Buddha, and Kalsang Jinpa, were tried on Oct. 28 by the Aba [Tib: Ngaba] Intermediate People’s Court,” in Sichuan province, Kanyak Tsering, a Tibetan living in India and having contacts in Tibet, told RFA.
According to the report, the men were detained in June and July, and were charged primarily because of articles they wrote about the 2008 Tibetan unrest in a local newsletter, Shar Dungri (“Eastern Snow Mountain”).
A family member also told RFA that all three, along with their lawyers and some family members, were present in the court. The source said each of the men denied his guilt of the charges made against them in a trial that lasted about half a day.
No verdict was announced following the closed trial, and family sources in Tibet said they were told the case would be “reviewed” by authorities before sentences were imposed.
“When they came out of the court, the three writers were allowed to see family members for a few minutes under the watch of police,” a Tibetan source said.
“Buddha tried to hold his two-year-old son, but was unable to hold him because he was chained. So he kissed his child twice and asked his wife to make sure their son learned the Tibetan language. Then he was escorted away,” the source said.
Buddha had earlier spoken in court in fluent Chinese to deny having committed any crime, adding that articles of the kind that he and the other men were accused of writing were also published by Han Chinese.
“[But] since we are minorities, you punish us with detention, trial, and jail,” he said.
“If we are convicted of these charges, we will carry a heavy load on our hearts because of this injustice and because of the inequality among different nationalities, though we are citizens of the same country.”
A family member said the other two men also “spoke well” in Tibetan in their own defence, but felt that a court translator provided an imprecise translation of their remarks.
Following the widespread unrest in Tibet in 2008, China unleashed a new wave of crackdown in Tibet to squelch all forms of dissent. It has jailed scores of Tibetan writers, artists, singers, and educators for asserting Tibetan national identity and civil rights in the two years since widespread protests swept the region. Tibet observers describe it as the largest ongoing crackdown on Tibetan intellectuals since the end of China’s chaotic Cultural Revolution in 1976.
