Torture and Abuse in Chinese PrisonsChinese murder innocent Tibetans. In addition to the fact that arrest and imprisonment in Tibet are frequently carried out as a result of peaceful dissident activity--in violation of international human rights law--there are serious abuses following detention. Incidents of severe beatings at the time of arrest, torture during incarceration, and severe beatings of inmates already sentenced have been reported with sufficient frequency and from a number of credible sources as to put the issue beyond doubt and, moreover, to demonstrate that these abuses are not isolated incidents but rather the product of a policy for dealing with political dissidents. Such reports continue to emerge.Human Rights Watch estimates that there are approximately 600 known political prisoners in Tibet, most of them monks and nuns.A Tibetan arrested in Lhasa in August 1999 for trying to raise the Tibetan flag in a public square, Tashi Tsering, was brutally beaten before being taken away by Public Security officers. In March 2000, he was reported to have committed suicide in prison a month earlier. In April 2000, a further death in custody was reported, that of Sonam Rinchen, a farmer from a town near Lhasa. He had been arrested with two others in 1992 for unfurling a Tibetan flag during a protest and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Although information is difficult to obtain, a study by the Tibet Information Network suggests the incidence of deaths in detention in Lhasa's Drapchi prison among prisoners due for release in 1998-1999 averaged approximately 1 in 24. Several such deaths were reported as suicides.In one notable incident in May 1998, political prisoners in Drapchi staged major protests to coincide with a visit from a European Union delegation. The protests were non-violent, but the authorities' reaction was severe: one monk, Lobsang Gelek, died after he was shot. His family was later told that he had committed suicide. The authorities also attributed the deaths of several others prisoners who had demonstrated to suicide, despite credible reports that they had been beaten. Four nuns who had protested all died on the same day in the same way while held in strict solitary confinement. The authorities claimed they had committed suicide, but unofficial reports said they were singled out for particularly harsh treatment as suspected ringleaders of the protests.At least ten prisoners are believed to have died in the aftermath of the protests. Those subjected to beatings are reported to have included several nuns known to already have had their original sentences extended for continued non-violent protests in prison. Most prominent among them is Ngawang Sangdrol, one of several nuns who smuggled a recording of political protest songs out of prison in 1993, and whose sentence was increased to 18 years.To date, the Chinese government has been evasive in responding to European Union and NGO questions about the Drapchi protests, but it is clear that the imposition of arbitrary extensions to their sentences is a further abuse affecting Tibetan political prisoners. Only last week in fact, nine Tibetan prisoners in Kandze, an important town in the eastern reaches of the Tibetan Plateau, were reported to have had their five-year prison sentences for participating in a peaceful protest in October 1999, increased to ten-year terms.The Chinese authorities have also been unresponsive to concerns expressed by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention about the cases of three Tibetans who had their sentences extended for staging a peaceful political protest during the Working Group's visit to Drapchi in October 1997. To date, Chinese authorities have refused to adequately explain their actions. Nor have they explained their failure to release Ngawang Choephel, the well-known Tibetan musicologist who was arrested while doing research in Tibet in 1995, and whose detention the Working Group has formally declared to be in contravention of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.Human Rights Watch is also concerned about fifty Tibetan students detained late last month when they sought to return home via Nepal after previously leaving Tibet to further their education in India. They, too, may be victims of arbitrary detention. The Chinese government should release them immediately absent evidence that they have engaged in criminal acts. None should be held for peaceful political activity and all should be granted internationally recognized due process protections, including the right to be informed of the charges against them.
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