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发帖数: 17243 | 1 BEIJING -- Noted Tibetan political prisoner Jigme Gyatso has been released
after 17 years in a Chinese prison and is reported to be in poor health as a
result of his treatment, an overseas Tibetan spokesman and U.S.-backed
broadcaster said Tuesday.
The 52-year-old former monk has returned to his hometown in an ethnic
Tibetan area in the northwest province of Gansu, according to Tashi Phuntsok
, spokesman for the self-declared Tibetan government-in-exile in India. He
said Jigme Gyatso had been released about one year early, likely because of
poor health due to harsh treatment in prison.
Radio Free Asia also reported the release, saying he appeared "very weak"
upon returning home Monday after being released two days earlier from Chusul
prison near Tibet's regional capital Lhasa, where many political prisoners
are held. It said friends reported him as walking with a limp and
complaining of problems with his heart and vision and other physical
complaints related to poor nutrition or lack of medical treatment.
It was no immediately possible to confirm Jigme Gyatso's release. Chusul
prison has no listed phone number and government and police officials in
Lhasa said they had no information on the case. Tibet remains off-limits to
foreign reporters without special permission.
Jigme Gyatso was among Tibet's better-known political prisoners, with
numerous organizations including Amnesty International calling for his
release. He met also in 2005 with then-United Nations special rapporteur on
torture Manfred Nowak, who called the following year for him to be set free.
Arrested during a crackdown on dissent in 1996, he was sentenced to 15 years
on charges of "inciting splittism" and the now-abolished crime of "counter-
revolution." Initially held at Lhasa's notorious Drapchi prison, he was
among a group of prisoners who were reportedly beaten and tortured following
a pro-independence protest in 1998 coinciding with a visit by European
Union delegates.
His sentence was then extended by three years in 2004 after he shouted
slogans in prison in support of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai
Lama, who fled to India amid an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in
1959. China says Tibet has been its territory for centuries, while many
Tibetans say theirs was an independent state.
China has used overwhelming force to crush successive waves of anti-
government activism among Tibetans, the latest in 2008 when bloody rioting
in Lhasa sparked a wave of protests across Tibetan regions. The fate of many
of those detained remains unknown, while numerous Tibetans arrested earlier
on state security charges continue to serve long sentences. | d*******o
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