Tibetan writer languishes in Chinese prison since 2019 without trial: Report
Jun 25, 2021
Beijing [China], June 25 : A Tibetan writer, who was arrested on unspecified charges by Chinese authorities in 2019, has still not been brought to trial.
Lobsang Lhundup, who goes by the pen name Dhi Lhaden, was taken into custody in June 2019. At that time he was working at a private cultural education center in Chengdu, the capital of western China's Sichuan province, Radio Free Asia reported citing a source.
"It appears that someone told the owner of the cultural center about the teaching materials he was using, and so he was arrested," RFA's source said, speaking on condition of anonymity for reasons of personal safety.
"Lhundup is a friendly person and known to many people, and his friends have avoided talking about him till now in the hope that he might be released," the source said.
"But his trial is still pending. No further information about him has been released, and no one has been allowed to meet with him at all."
He is a native of the Pema district of Sichuan's Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, sources said.
He became a monk at the age of 11 and studied at Sichuan's Larung Gar Tibetan Buddhist Academy, from which thousands of resident monks and nuns were later evicted by Chinese authorities.
After teaching Buddhism at Drepung and Sera monasteries in Tibet's regional capital Lhasa in his late 20s, Lhundup travelled widely in Tibet, later writing and publishing books about region-wide protests in 2008 against Beijing's policies and rule in Tibetan areas.
On December 4, 2020, Lhundup's family was summoned by Chinese authorities to discuss his case, but they learned only that his trial was still pending and they were not allowed to meet with him.
Lhundup has a wife and child, sources said.
The Chinese government occupied Tibet in 1950 and has ever since tried to control the region, destroying 98 per cent of the monasteries and nunneries.
China is using the same suppression tactics against Tibet that it has been using against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, with about 500,000 Tibetans are now being held in labour camps.
Writers, singers, and artists promoting Tibetan national identity and culture have frequently been detained by Chinese authorities, with many handed long jail terms, following the protests that swept Tibet and Tibetan areas of China in 2008.
