Tibetan jailed for subversive songs

(TibetanReview.net, Jan31, 2010)  A court in Sogpo (also known as Yulgan, Chinese: Henan) County of Malho (Chinese: Huangnan) Prefecture, Qinghai Province, has sentenced a popular young Tibetan singer to one year and seven months in jail. The singer, Tashi Dhondup, was seized from a restaurant in the provincial capital Xining on Dec 3 last year for producing an album with songs considered by the authorities to be subversive.

It was not clear when the sentencing took place. The singer had gone into hiding in Nov’09 after the authorities banned his album, which was titled as “Torture without trace” in Nov’09.

The 13 songs in the album were said to express nostalgia for the Dalai Lama and refer to the Chinese crackdown on Tibetans across the Tibetan Plateau during and after the Mar’08 large-scale protests.

Tashi had previously been held in Xining in Sep’08 and severely beaten for seven days for his song 'The Year of 1959'. The 5,000 CDs had sold out within a month of its October release in the province.

The recently married singer’s parents are farmers.