DHARAMSALA, August 29: In yet another crackdown on Tibetan artistes, writers and intellectuals a Chinese court in Tibet’s Malho region have sentenced a Tibetan singer to five years’ imprisonment in a secret trial, reported the RFA. Though the date of the verdict and the actual charges against Shawo Tashi, 40, are not known he is said to be held at a detention centre in Xining, provincial capital of Qinghai.
According to RFA’s sources, he was accused of publicizing a self-immolation protest and for singing songs with censored political themes. The People’s Intermediate Court in Malho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture heard the trial after investigations against Shawo was carried out in collaboration with the Chinese authorities in Rebkong, where several self-immolations have taken place including one by a Tibetan mother named Tamdin Tso on November 7 last year.
RFA cited its source as saying that the singer was punished for “distributing Tamdin Tso’s photographs, copying her final statement on the photographs, participating in a protest rally against the Chinese government, and singing songs about Tibetan nationality.”
“His family members knew nothing of his whereabouts or health until recently, when they learned about his sentence,” the same source told RFA, adding that Shawo had sung many songs among which one titled ‘faraway father’, an apparent reference to the exiled Tibetan leader Dalai Lama, became very popular. The song is in praise of the Tibetan leader and expressed a yearning to see and be blessed by him.
China arrested another Tibetan singer last month in Machu County for organizing musical concerts with a theme to promote Tibetan language.
