Tibetan Gets 15 Years
A
Chinese court convicts a prominent environmentalist and activist, who vows to
appeal.
HONG KONG, June
24, 2010—A
court in China’s troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang sentenced a
prominent Tibetan businessman-turned-activist to 15 years in jail and a heavy
fine on Thursday on theft-related charges that were initially dropped in 1998,
his wife and lawyer told Radio Free Asia (RFA).
Karma
Samdrup, 42, denied the charges and will appeal, his lawyer, Pu Zhiqiang, said
in an interview with RFA’s Tibetan service.
"The
verdict was unfair,” his wife, Dolkar Tso, said. “I asked for some
time to meet and talk to my husband but I was not allowed.”
“I
just want to let him know all his relatives are proud of him and he
shouldn’t worry about us. But I wasn’t given the chance.”
Pu,
the lawyer, said that in addition to 15 years in jail, Karma Samdrup was
sentenced by a court in Yanqi county, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR),
to five years’ deprivation of his political rights and a fine of 10,000
yuan (U.S. $1,500).
“He
denied the charges in court and expressed his intention to appeal,” Pu
added.
The
appeal must be filed within 10 days, according to Chinese law.
Karma
Samdrup, an environmentalist and art collector, went on trial Tuesday. Dolkar
Tso said her husband appeared to have been drugged and beaten and had lost some
40 pound (20 kilos) in detention.
Pu said Karma
Samdrup was tortured in 1998 and again this year.
“The
Bazhou Prefecture PSB [Public Security Bureau] tortured him and tried to get a
forced confession from him. He lost 20 kilos in prison from over 90 kilos
(198 pounds) and he owes 660,000 yuan (U.S. $97,000) to the prison and other
inmates for food and water,” he said in an interview.
“In
China, on top of laws we have leaders. So you never know what will
happen,” Pu said earlier this week.
“There
are clear signs of torture and forced confession through torture,” as
well as an obviously forged confession, he added.
Detained
in 1998
Karma Samdrup
was taken by authorities from his home in the southwestern province of Sichuan
back to Xinjiang in January, on charges resurrected from a 1998 case against
him which was dropped by order of Xinjiang's Supreme Court.
Pu said the
accusation against Karma Samdrup related to an incident in 1998, when he
acquired, as an art collector, cultural artifacts that later turned out
to have been stolen by grave-robbers.
Several men
were convicted in connection with the robbery by the Yanqi County High People's
Court, but the charges against Karma Samdrup were dropped.
Karma Samdrup
comes from a family of prominent Tibetans, many of whom have already fallen
foul of the Chinese authorities.
His elder
brother, Rinchen Samdrup, was detained in August 2009 on charges of subversion
and "splitting the motherland."
At the time
of his detention, Karma Samdrup was in the process of setting up a museum of
Tibetan culture, and was judged by other Tibetans to own the largest private
collection in the world of Tibetan art and artifacts.
Several
artists and intellectuals have been detained or have disappeared in recent
months in what activists say amounts to the broadest suppression of Tibetan
culture and expression in years.
Tensions have
frequently risen in Tibetan areas of China since deadly rioting broke out
following days of peaceful protests by Tibetans in their capital, Lhasa, in
March 2008.
Security is
also very tight in the XUAR ahead of the anniversary of deadly ethnic violence
in the regional capital, Urumqi, which was sparked on July 5, 2009 by a
demonstration by the mostly Muslim Uyghur ethnic group whose homeland is in
Xinjiang.
At least 200
people died in the violence, which Beijing has blamed on incitement by U.S.-based
Uyghur exiled dissident Rebiya Kadeer.
Original
reporting in Tibetan by RFA's Tibetan service. Tibetan service director:
Jigme Ngapo. Translated from the Tibetan by Karma Dorjee. Translated from the
Chinese and written in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.
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