(TibetanReview.net, Aug04, 2015) – Some 200 Tibetans from across Switzerland and Liechtenstein staged a protest rally in front of the United Nations building in Geneva on Jul 31 over the suspicious death in a Chinese prison in Sichuan Province last month of a revered Tibetan political prisoner. Tibetans were also outraged by the fact that rather than releasing his body for the traditional last rites, the Chinese cremated the body of the prisoner, Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche, 65, and later snatched the ashes as they were being taken to his home county of Nyagchu (Chinese: Yajiang) in the same province.
The protesters belonged to 25 Tibetan communities across Switzerland and Liechtenstein, with the rally being coordinated jointly by the Local Tibetan Assembly, the Tibetan Women’s Association, the Tibetan Youth Association of Europe, the Swiss Tibet Friendship Association and the Office of Tibet, Geneva.
Those who addressed the rally included Mr René Longet, former administrative advisor (Mayor) of Onex (canton of Geneva); Mr Tethong Wangpo, member of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile from Europe, and the Dalai Lama’s Geneva-based representative Mr Ngodup Dorjee.
A prayer service was also held at the Rikon Choekhorling Monastery a Rikon.
Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche was not only a prominent religious figure recognized by Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in the 1980s, but also admired for his work to protect the environment, provide shelter, education and health services to the destitute, the area of promoting and protecting the Tibetan culture, and in enhancing communal harmony. China falsely implicated him in an unsolved explosions campaign in Sichuan’s capital Chengdu and sentenced him to death in 2002. The sentence was later commuted to life in jail.