amnesty international

PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

27 May 1997

AI Index: ASA 17/029/97

Action Ref: CHIRAN 4/97 Distr: SC/CO/GR

After two years of incommunicado detention and a secret trial, a senior Tibetan Lama and two other Tibetans have been convicted of political "crimes" and sentenced to prison terms for communicating with the exiled Dalai Lama over the search for the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibet's second highest religious leader Amnesty International considers that they are prisoners of conscience, imprisoned in violation of international human rights standards. It is clear that the charges and verdict against them have been dictated by political considerations, as part of the Chinese government's efforts to assert its control over religious affairs in Tibet. Their case shows, once again, that the rule of law in China is subordinate to political objectives, including the defeat of perceived political enemies.

Amnesty International is calling for their immediate and unconditional release Chadrel Rimpoche, the 58 year-old former Abbot of Tashilhunpo monastery, was sentenced on 21 April 1997 to six years' imprisonment and deprivation of political rights for an additional three years on charges of "conspiring to split the country" and "leaking state secrets". The charges refer to accusations that he communicated with the exiled Dalai Lama in the course of the six-year search for the boy reincarnating the Panchen Lama

Prior to his arrest in May 1995, Chadrel Rimpoche (in Chinese, Chazha Chamba Chilai) was director of the Civil Administration Society of Tashilhunpo monastery - the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama in Shigatse (Xigaze). He had been entrusted by the Chinese authorities to head the official Search Committee formed in 1989 to identify a successor to the 10th Panchen Lama, who died that year. Chadrel Rimpoche also held an official post as Vice-Chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)

Champa Chung, a 50 year-old monk and assistant of Chadrel Rimpoche, was sentenced to four years' imprisonment and deprivation of political rights for an additional two years on the same charges as Chadrel Rimpoche. Champa Chung was formerly Secretary of the Search Committee for the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama and Deputy Director of the Administration of the Panchen Lama's residence in Shigatse

The third defendant, Samdrup, a Tibetan businessman, was sentenced to two years' imprisonment and one year' deprivation of political rights on the charge of "conspiring to split the country". He is believed to have been accused of passing on letters between Chadrel Rimpoche and the Dalai Lama concerning the search for the Panchen Lama's reincarnation

All three had been detained in May 1995. Chadrel Rimpoche and Champa Chung were detained just a few days after the Dalai Lama announced from India, on 14 May 1995, that Gendun Choekyi Nyima, a 6 year-old boy from Nagchu prefecture in Tibet, had been identified as the 11th Panchen Lama. The boy was one of 28 candidates identified during the search. This announcement, made without consultation with the Chinese government, was immediately denounced by the authorities in Beijing. They disputed the Dalai Lama's authority to make such an announcement, on the ground that the confirmed candidate for the reincarnation had to be approved by the government in Beijing. An emergency session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference issued a statement on 24 May 1995 describing the Dalai Lama's statement as "illegal and invalid". Throughout the summer of 1995, the authorities called a series of meetings within Tibet's highest religious circles to denounce the Dalai Lama's announcement and Chadrel Rimpoche.

In November 1995, the Chinese government approved another six-year old boy, Gyaltsen Norbu, as 11th Panchen Lama

Arrest

The arrest of Chadrel Rimpoche, Champa Chung and Samdrup was reported by unofficial sources shortly after they were detained, but was denied for several months by Chinese official sources. The announcement of their trial by the official Chinese news agency Xinhua on 7 May 1997 was the first official acknowledgement of their detention Chadrel Rimpoche was detained together with Champa Chung on or around 17 May 1995 in Chengdu, Sichuan province, while travelling back to Tibet after a stay of several weeks in Beijing. Both had gone to Beijing in late February 1995 to attend a meeting of the CPPCC, held in March, which reportedly discussed the final selection of the Panchen Lama's reincarnation. According to official reports published after his arrest, by that time, Chadrel Rimpoche had already informed the authorities that Gendun Choekyi Nyima had been identified as the sole candidate for the reincarnation. According to unofficial sources, while in Beijing, he was put under pressure to accept the government's p

lan for the Panchen Lama's selection and placed under close surveillance, but he managed to leave Beijing in mid-May. Following his arrest in Chengdu, he was reportedly taken back to Beijing where he was held incommunicado. His detention was not officially acknowledged. At the beginning of June 1995, the State Nationalities and Religious Affairs Commission in Beijing issued a statement denying that Chadrel Rimpoche had been arrested. In August 1995, a Chinese official told foreign journalists that Chadrel Rimpoche had been ill since May and was in hospital. The same answer about his whereabouts was still being given by Chinese officials in May 1996

Samdrup, a businessman from Shigatse aged in his 30s, is believed to have been arrested later in May 1995. According to some sources, he was detained on 30 May 1995 at a police checkpoint in Tingri, in southern Tibet near the border with Nepal, while on his way to a meeting with wool merchants. Prior to his arrest, Samdrup was general manager of the Dram branch of the Gangjian Corporation, a major trading company affiliated with the Tashilhunpo monastery

Dismissal and denunciations

In July 1995, Chadrel Rimpoche was removed from his posts as head of the Tashilhunpo management committee and as head of the Search Committee for the reincarnation, and new leaders were appointed. The official explanation for his removal was that he was in hospital for medical treatment and that the search must continue On 11 July 1995, however, the authorities organised a meeting at the Tashilhunpo monastery during which a long report was read to the monks condemning Chadrel Rimpoche for his links with the Dalai Lama. According to unofficial sources, Champa Chung was taken to this meeting in order to make him confess to his "crimes", which he reportedly refused to do, stating that the issue of the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama was a purely religious matter. The meeting was disrupted by monks protesting against the denunciation of Chadrel Rimpoche. Protests continued the following days, leading to the detention of up to 50 people, both monks and lay people

On 24 November 1995, the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Committee of the CPPCC - of which Chadrel Rimpoche had been Vice-Chairman - made a speech criticizing the Dalai Lama for "arbitrarily confirming" the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama. He also criticized the "crimes" of Chadrel Rimpoche without citing his name, in a reference to the "former responsible person" of Tashilhunpo Monastery:

"... I hope you will set an example by taking the lead in exposing and criticizing the Dalai [Lama]'s crimes of undermining the work related to the reincarnation of the Panchen [Lama] and in thoroughly exposing and criticizing the crimes of the former responsible person of the Committee for Democratic Administration at the Tashilhunpo Lamasery who colluded with the Dalai [Lama]; [and] resolutely negate the so-called reincarnated boy arbitrarily confirmed by the Dalai [Lama] ..." Shortly after that meeting, Chadrel Rimpoche was criticized by name in articles published by the official media, accusing him of "colluding" with the Dalai Lama during the search for the reincarnation. According to unofficial sources, in 1993 the Chinese authorities had authorized Chadrel Rimpoche to send a letter to the Dalai Lama to seek assistance for the search. No mention of this, however, was made in the official reports denouncing Chadrel Rimpoche In May 1996, official sources reported that Chadrel Rimpoche had been d

ismissed from all his posts within the Tibet regional CPPCC committee because he had "gone against the basic principles and lost the political stand of a patriot"

Accusations

On 1 December 1995, a lengthy article in the official newspaper People's Daily, which denounced the "interference" of the Dalai Lama, made a series of specific accusations against Chadrel Rimpoche, designed to show that he had followed instructions from the Dalai Lama and ignored procedures laid-down by the Chinese government for the selection of the Panchen Lama. The article asserted as follows the government's right to control the selection process: "According to religious ritual and historical convention, the search for and selection of the soul boy' must be conducted under the leadership of the central government, and it is the central government that has the supreme authority in the issue of the reincarnation of the soul boy'." According to the article, on 12 May 1994, the Dalai Lama had "sent a person" to convey a message to Chadrel Rimpoche, instructing him to conduct a ritual known as "observing the lake", in order to "counterfeit the characteristics of the boy he had chosen to deceive t

he people". The article claimed that this ritual had already been completed in the early stages of the search, but that Chadrel Rimpoche "illegally led some people in conducting it again" in October 1994

The article made several accusations to demonstrate that the selection of the boy was a "conspiracy". First, it claimed, in January 1995 Chadrel Rimpoche had ignored the opinion of members of the search team by "arbitrarily" including the name of the boy chosen by the Dalai Lama in a short-list of seven leading candidates from among 28 previously selected children. Second, the article said, on 10 February 1995 Chadrel Rimpoche had reported to the authorities that the "sole candidate for the soul boy" had been identified though a ritual known as "drawing lots through rice-balls"- which the Dalai Lama had allegedly urged him to do. Third, the article alleged that Chadrel Rimpoche had "lied" about the age of the boy

The article also said that, "at the Dalai Lama's instruction", Chadrel Rimpoche had made a telephone call from Beijing to the Tashilhunpo monastery in March 1995, in which he allegedly said: "we must insist on the 'sole' candidate for the soul boy, and cannot accept the drawing of lots from the golden urn... because it will be disastrous if the wrong candidate is chosen through lot-drawing... This is what the other side thinks." The reference to "the other side", according to the article, meant the Dalai Lama.

Similar accusations were made in a report published on 25 November 1995 by the official news agency Xinhua, which also accused Chadrel Rimpoche of having secretly sent a letter to the Dalai Lama in late 1994, in which Chadrel Rimpoche "gave detailed information of 25 children" and "made a recommendation for a certain child as the first candidate". This accusation is probably related to the charge that Chadrel Rimpoche "leaked state secrets".

Trial

On 7 May 1997, the Xinhua news agency announced that Chadrel Rimpoche, Champa Chung and Samdrup had been tried in camera by a court in Shigatse on 21 April 1997. The agency said that the trial has been closed to the public because it involved "state secrets", as provided by the law in such cases.

The agency did not give any details of the specific accusations on which the charges were based, or of the evidence presented against the defendants at the trial. It simply stated that the defendants had "colluded with separatist forces abroad", "seriously jeopardizing the national unification and unity of ethnic groups" and "damaging the stability and development of Tibet".

According to the Xinhua report, the three defendants were convicted of "conspiring to split the country" under Article 92 of the Criminal Law, which deals with "plots to subvert the government and dismember the State". Under Article 92, the minimum punishment for this offence is 10 years' imprisonment, though the defendants received sentences below this minimum.

Xinhua explained that the court passed sentences below the prescribed minimum in view of the "details of the case". The agency did not explain what this meant, but the information it gave indicates that the court's sentencing decision was not the result of "leniency" or "mitigated circumstances". This decision thus remains unexplained, except for the fact that sentencing in China, like prosecution and verdict, is often determined by political considerations

Chadrel Rimpoche and Champa Chung were also convicted of "leaking state secrets". The Xinhua report on the trial gave no indication of the nature of the "state secrets" involved, but an earlier Xinhua report indicates this based on the accusation that in late 1994 Chadrel Rimpoche had sent a letter to the Dalai Lama naming 25 boys identified by the search team as candidates for the reincarnation. If this accusation is founded, it remains unclear when and how such information was classified as a "state secret".

Conveniently, the charge of "leaking state secrets" was used to justify the holding of the trial in camera and keep the evidence against the defendants secret. This procedure was used despite the fact that one of the defendants was not charged with "leaking state secrets", while the other two were charged as well with the separate offence of "conspiring to split the country" for which, under Chinese law, all three should have been tried in public

Despite the secrecy surrounding the trial, none of the detailed accusations previously published in official reports indicate that Chadrel Rimpoche and his two co-accused were involved in any criminal activities or in "plotting to split the country". There is no indication that Chadrel Rimpoche or Champa Chung had access to legitimate state secrets. Chadrel Rimpoche's only "crime" appears to have been that he did not follow to the letter the government's instructions for the search and selection of the Panchen Lama reincarnation. In this context, the verdict and sentence against him and his co-accused seems to be an act of political retribution Amnesty International is calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Chadrel Rimpoche, Champa Chung and Samdrup on the grounds that they are imprisoned for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of belief and association, in violation of international human rights standards

Amnesty International is also renewing its call to the authorities to disclose the whereabouts of Gendun Choekyi Nyima, by now 8 years old, and his family, who have effectively disappeared since May 1995. Despite official assurances that the boy is free and well, his whereabouts have not been disclosed and no independent observer has been allowed to see him or his parents. The authorities have stated that he is being "looked after" for his own protection, but he remains a virtual prisoner

This document is sent to China and CHIRAN Coordinators for action by groups. It is sent to Sections for information only. Check with the East Asia Sub-Regional Team if sending appeals after 30 June 1997

Number of words: 2798

INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT, 1 EASTON STREET, LONDON WC1X 8DJ, UNITED KINGDOM