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TIN News Update / 18 November, 1996 / total no of pages: 3 ISSN 1355-3313

A nun in a Tibetan prison has had her sentence increased by nine years because she did not stand up when an official entered the room, failed to tidy her bedding and shouted a slogan during punishment, according to un-official sources in Tibet. The nun's sentence was increased eight months after a UN Committee ruled that her original sentence was unlawful and called on China to release her.

The nun, 19 year old Ngawang Sangdrol, had refused to stand up in front of a woman prison official during a re-education drive in Lhasa's Drapchi prison. The nun had later shouted "Free Tibet" when she and other women were made to stand in the rain as punishment for refusing to keep their cells clean, said the sources, who asked not to be named.

She was sentenced on 31st July this year to 9 years for the incidents, according to several reports, although one said that the new sentence was 8 years.

Ngawang Sangdrol, who comes from Garu nunnery 5 km north of Lhasa, will have the new sentence added to two sentences which she is already serving - 3 years for taking part in a pro-independence demonstration in 1992 and 6 years for singing nationalist songs in the prison in 1993.

With a total sentence of 18 years Ngawang Sangdrol is now facing longer in jail than any other female political prisoner in Tibet, similar in length to the sentences served by Tibetans in the "hardline" era of the 1960s and 1970s. She will be due for release in the year 2010 at the age of 33, by which time she will have spent 60% of her life behind bars for political offences, all of it in the post-1980 liberalisation era.

The nun was amongst a number of women prisoners who refused to tidy their bedding or clean their cells, apparently in protest at a re-education campaign which demanded that the women accept the 6 year old child appointed by the state as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama, the most important leader to have remained in Tibet after the Dalai Lama's flight to India in 1959. China's appointment of the child in November last year contradicted an earlier ruling by the exiled Dalai Lama.

The women broke a number of minor prison rules during their informal protest against the Panchen Lama re-education drive. "She did not stand up when Brigade Commander [duizhang] Khandrol Jangpe entered the room and as a result Khandrol Jangpe walked out," said a source with close connections to the prison.

"When an official was sent from each team to check to see whether the cells were clean or not, the cells were declared unclean and as punishment the women had to stand in the rain," the source added. "That was when Ngawang Sangdrol shouted `Free Tibet'. Brigade Commander Jangpe immediately called in many soldiers and Ngawang Sangdrol and three other nuns - Phuntsog Pema, Norzin and Damchoe Gyaltsen - were badly beaten," added the source, who asked not to be named.

Item 5 of the "Regulations on Civilised Behaviour and Politeness for Prisoners" issued by the Tibet Regional Labour Reform Bureau in 1988 says inmates must "stand up when received by cadres". Other regulations, known as the "Ten Musts", say that prisoners "must love the motherland and preserve the unification of the motherland and the solidarity of the nationalities" and "must support the plans, policies and methods of the Chinese Communist Party".

FOOD RATION REDUCED -

The women's protest and the beatings of the four nuns are believed to have taken place in March this year although confirmation of the news has only now reached the outside world through another nun, a former prisoner, who escaped from Tibet earlier this week.

The escapee confirmed earlier reports from within Tibet that Ngawang had been re-sentenced and said that since March she has been singled out for severe punishment. "She was white and emaciated," said the escapee, 16 year old Gyaltsen Pelsang, herself a well-known child political prisoner who last saw Ngawang four months ago.

Reports in August had said that Ngawang Sangdrol was being held in a confinement cell at Drapchi prison with no windows or light, and that she was on a restricted diet, receiving small amounts of food only twice a day. The reports had not been credited until now.

In the months before the trial Ngawang Sangdrol had been on special punishment and had been fed only one plain dumpling or bun per day, according to an informed source. On one occasion in July a well-wisher, who has since been interviewed by TIN, succeeded in smuggling more substantial food to the nun, but she was physically unable to eat it, an indication of severe malnutrition. Her present condition is unknown.

Ngawang, whose layname is Rigchog, was first arrested when she was 13 years old for taking part in a pro-independence demonstration by nuns in the Norbulingka, the former summer palace of the Dalai Lama in Lhasa, in August 1990. The women were accused of "spreading separatist ideology in order to split our Motherland... by shouting reactionary slogans such as 'Tibet is independent'," according to their court indictment, but Ngawang was considered too young to be tried and was released after nine months.

She was badly beaten in custody and one former prisoner, Palden Gyatso, claimed last year that both her hands were permanently damaged from injuries received at the time.

By the time she was released, her mother had died, her father was himself in prison for a political offence, and as a former political prisoner she was not permitted to rejoin her nunnery. She drifted around Lhasa until June 1992 when she was arrested for attempting to stage a demonstration in the Lhasa Barkor along with one other nun and three monks. She was then sentenced to three years in prison "for incitement to subversive and separatist activities", according to a statement by China to the UN in 1994.

In September 1993, when Ngawang Sangdrol was aged 16, she was again tried by a Lhasa court along with thirteen other women prisoners who had made a tape recording of nationalist songs in the prison, for which she was given an additional sentence of 6 years. A fellow nun from Garu who visited her in Drapchi prison in early 1995 already described her then as "much weaker" than when she had been in the nunnery. Her father, uncle and her sister's common-law husband are also reported to be in prison for political offences.

On 30th November 1995 the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, a Committee of the United Nations which assesses reports of illegal imprisonment, ruled that the continuing detention of Ngawang Sangdrol was arbitrary because she had been punished for exercising her rights to freedom of opinion. The UN Committee requested China "to take the necessary steps to remedy the situation in order to bring it into conformity with the provisions and principles incorporated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights".

Gyaltsen Pelsang, who this week confirmed the reports of Ngawang Sangdrol's sentencing, was released from prison on 9th February 1995, after nearly 20 months in detention, mostly incommunicado, without charge. She was the youngest political prisoners in Tibet when she was detained at the age of 12 as one of the so-called "Garu 14", a group of nuns sentenced for trying to stage a demonstration in June 1993. She became prominent after it was discovered that she was still in custody eight months after the Chinese authorities had informed the UN and the European Union that she had been released.

Note: a photograph of Ngawang Sangdrol is available from TIN.