By Tenzin Dharpo
DHARAMSHALA, July 27: A man from the restive Ngaba County has reportedly been jailed by Chinese authorities for participating in a group chat in the popular we-chat micro messaging site that celebrated the Tibetan leader Dalai Lama’s birthday last year.
Due to China’s intense clamp down on the communications channel in Tibet, news of Argya Gya’s arrest on Nov. 18 last year has only now ben reported. A source of Radio Free Asia said he is currently being held at a prison in Lunggu County. Another Tibetan, a monk named Lodroe, is also reported to be jailed for connections with the same we-chat group chat.
Incidentally Argya Gya has already spent a stint in prison earlier in 2011 over the involvement in a self immolation case of a fellow monk from Kirti monastery. Argya who is now disrobed was earlier a monk at the Kirti monastery in Ngaba County which is being considered the epicenter of self immolation protests inside Tibet and increasingly being subjected to intense crackdown and surveillance.
Chinese government’s intensification of control especially towards the birthday celebrations of the Dalai Lama has resulted in many arrests although rights group Tibetan centre for Human Rights and Democracy say that those known cases may only be the tip of an ice berg in terms of detentions and arrests made by Chinese authorities in totality.
Last year a Tibetan man named Tsering Dhondrup was arrested for sharing a picture of the exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama and the banned Tibetan national flag in the same micromessaging app in Rebkong County as Tibetans around the world celebrated the 80th birthday of the Tibetan leader.
