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TIN News Update / 23 August, 1997/ total no of pages: 2 ISSN 1355-3313

Tibetan Sentenced to 9 Years for Prisoner List -

A Tibetan tailor has been sentenced to nine years in prison for drawing up a list of political prisoners four years ago.

Two men, Shol Dawa and Topgyal, received sentences of nine years and six years respectively after a trial in which it was found that they "had gathered together such items as a list of names of current and released political prisoners from our region", according to the court's written decision.

Topgyal, a 58 year old Lhasa businessman originally from Tsang-do township in Lhundrub county, was also found to have written three "reactionary letters" which he had passed on to Shol Dawa, a 60 year old tailor.

The letters "together with the list of prisoners' names, were stamped with an ox-head stamp of their own manufacture, and were then to be sent abroad as a report to the Dalai clique", said the court statement, a copy of which has been seen by TIN.

The trial was held in the Lhasa Intermediate People's Court on 8th August 1996, but no public announcement of the decision has been seen. The decision only became known when the document was obtained from Tibetan refugees this month.

Because the two men had intended to send the list of names abroad they were convicted of espionage, a charge which is now used widely in China to replace the earlier charge of counter-revolution, due to be phased out under new legislation coming into effect on 1st October this year.

"This court holds that the defendants Xuedawa [Shol Dawa] and Duobujie [Topgyal], with the objective of overturning the socialist system and the peoples' democratic dictatorship, actively accepted a mission specially appointed by foreign enemies, actively gathering various kinds of intelligence about this country within our borders and engaging in criminal activities that endangered state security," ruled three judges in their concluding decision, which was issued as "Lhasa Criminal Court Trial Document No 48 (1996)".

The only other action or incident referred to in the statement concerned a letter from a member of the India-based Tibet Women's Association giving details of three new members of the organisation. Shol Dawa had "passed the letter on" to another Tibetan for delivery to India at an unspecified date during 1994, according to the judges' statement.

The judges said that the two defendants had obtained the list of prisoners' names by asking two former prisoners, Dondrup Dorje and Ratoe Dawa, to write them down from memory. Dondrup Dorje, formerly a driver at the Lhasa Shoe and Hat Factory, and Ratoe Dawa, a monk at Ratoe monastery, were both released in 1993 after serving four years in prison for political offences, but escaped to India two years later. Some reports say that Dondrup Dorje returned to Tibet within weeks and was briefly detained again in August 1995.

Shol Dawa and Topgyal were detained on 14th August and 12th November 1995, over two years after the incidents for which they were tried and convicted. Their crime of collecting prisoners' names is believed to have been uncovered only when police interrogated a group of at least 11 former activists including Shol Dawa and Dondrup Dorje. The group had been detained in August 1995 to prevent disruption of the celebrations held on 1st September that year to mark the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Tibet Autonomous Region, according to unofficial sources.

Shol Dawa, age 60, a tailor named after the Shol area of Lhasa where he comes from, is a well-known figure among Lhasa activists. He was one of the first Tibetans to be arrested after the introduction of the liberalisation policy in 1980 and has already spent 6 years in prison for two previous convictions, both for "spreading counter-revolutionary propaganda".

On 29 September 1981 he was detained and later sentenced to two years imprisonment for making 260 cyclostyled copies of a pamphlet about Tibetan history called "Twenty Years of Tragic Experience", written at his request by the famous dissident scholar Geshe Lobsang Wangchug, who died in prison in 1987. "Dawa had also printed a picture of Tibet's national flag on top of the circular," said the 1982 court document which sentenced the tailor.

On 8 November 1985 he was detained and sentenced to four years for writing "with his own hand some ten copies of a circular denouncing "the deteriorating living conditions of six million Tibetans and the anti-secular foreign invasion of Tibet"," according to the 1995 court judgement, a copy of which was obtained by the exile Tibetan government.

"The Chinese set up kangaroo trials and randomly arrest and imprison Tibetans, charging them of crimes they are not guilty of, especially when the people exhibit open dislike for the Chinese regime," said Shol Dawa's daughter Nyidron in a statement asking for international help to release her father, issued from India in October 1995.

"As my father is at the moment experiencing such intolerable harsh treatment, we, the children of Dawa, are filled with sorrow but are unable to do anything to alleviate our father's sufferings," she said. Shol Dawa's wife died while he was in prison in 1987, and Nyidron and her two brothers now live in exile.

The situation in Lhasa is now stable, according to reports by the authorities there. "The situation has been calm for the past several years," Lhasa's Mayor, Lobsang Gyaltsen, told a group of Japanese journalists on 8th August. Three western journalists were allowed to visit Tibet in June and ten more foreign reporters are expected to be escorted to Lhasa later this month to coincide with the opening of the Lhasa Trade Fair on 31st August.

"Lhasa faces its best opportunity for development in its history," the Mayor wrote in a China Daily article about the Trade Fair on 19th August. 42 Lhasa-based companies are seeking to raise $67 million of foreign investment to develop mining, fertiliser production, logging, food processing, shops and tourism in the Lhasa area. Foreign investment in the whole Tibet Autonomous Region reached $9.16 million last year.

A delegation from the Swiss Government accompanied by three Swiss journalists arrives in Lhasa today to look at education and health care, and a party of German parliamentarians is due next week to research the human rights situation in the region.