DETENTION BY CHINA OF 831 TIBETAN POLITICAL PRISONERS

in its last report, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), based in Dharamsala, said that on December 30, 2010, there were 831 Tibetan political prisoners. 360 of these were sentenced by courts and 12 were sentenced to jail.
The report specifies that during 2010, 188 Tibetans were arrested or imprisoned and 71 were tried. Since 2008 more than 60 Tibetan writers, bloggers, intellectuals and people from the cultural world were arrested. The report also shows that since Spring 2008, 9 Tibetans were sentenced to death and two were executed, the others were sentenced to death with a two year suspension. Included in these figures are Sonam Tsering, Lama Lhaka and Sodor from the monastery in Kolu, Chamdo prefecture, sentenced in 2010.
The report criticises the political education conducted by China in Tibet, mainly an ordinance by the Government of Qinghai Province that requires that, until 2015, all classes and text books used by primary schools are to be in Chinese, including courses in Tibetan and English.
The report accuses China of continually increasing the limits on religious freedom in Tibet. In September 2010, the state administration for religious affairs announced ordinance n°8 entitled «Administration Measures for Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and for temples», which came into force in November. The ruling makes illegal, among other things, the maintenance of relationships between Tibetan religious centres and religious foreigners. Concerning the politics of development and modernisation of Tibet, the report accuses China of ignoring the approach based on rights and needs, that provokes for causes extreme difficulty in the living conditions of farmers and Tibetan nomads.