TIN has received news of the release of three political prisoners in the Tibet Autonomous Region after their sentences had expired.
Anu, also known as Ama Anu, a seamstress who lost her leg after being hit by a truck when she was young, was released after completing a four-year sentence. Although the exact charges against her are not known, she was detained as part of a Strike Hard crackdown begun in March 2001 in Lhasa and sentenced in the following October. Taking food to political prisoners, as well as providing a shelter to some of them after their release, may also have attracted the attention of the authorities and led to the actions against her. Anu, allegedly one of only two political prisoners in Drapchi (TAR prison No1) placed in a cell otherwise occupied by ‘ordinary’ criminal prisoners, is now about 52.
The second prisoner to be released was Jamphel Jangchub from Toelung Dechen county, Lhasa Municipality. After having initially been detained for his involvement in Tibet’s first major demonstration after the Cultural Revolution on 27 September 1987, he was arrested on 19 April 1989 and then sentenced in November to 19 years imprisonment for involvement with a clandestine pro-independence organization set up by monks from Drepung monastery. He was accused of “(…) illegally establishing a separatist organization at the monastery, collecting secret intelligence, slipping across the frontier, distributing leaflets advocating Tibetan independence and taking part in the March 1989 riots”. In 1994, Jamphel Jangchub’s sentence was reduced, reportedly because of his good work in the vegetable garden of Drapchi Prison in Lhasa. Jamphel Jangchub is in his mid-40s.
With Jamphel Jangchub’s release, the only member of the ‘Group of Ten’ Drepung monks, sentenced for their involvement with the 1989 pro-independence organisation, still in detention is Ngawang Phuljung.
The third prisoner to have been released is Lobsang Namgyal, a monk of Lhasa’s Nechung Buddhist Institute who was born in Chushur county, Lhasa Municipality. He was arrested in March 2001 and sentenced to four years imprisonment in Drapchi Prison after he had already been arrested and sentenced to three years `education through labour’ in 1995. He is now in his late 30s.
