(TibetanReview.net, Jun29’22) – China has sentenced early this month a Tibetan university student in Karze (Chinese: Ganzi) Prefecture, which is now part of its Sichuan Province, to a three-year jail term for contacting fellow-Tibetans living in exile, according to the Tibetan Service of rfa.org Jun 28.
The report said Nyima, who belongs to the prefecture’s Shelian Township, was arrested in January this year on charges of spying. He is said to be a student of Tibetan culture at what the report named as Sichuan’s Gehoe National University.
Fluent in Tibetan, Chinese and English, he was said to be always around tourists and visitors, conversing with them about Tibetan language and culture until his arrest.
“[He] was sentenced on Jun 5 to three years in prison for allegedly disseminating state secrets, but the Chinese authorities have shared no details of what kind of state secrets Nyima has exposed,” the report quoted a local Tibetan source as saying.
“He could be seen sharing Tibet’s history and authentic Tibetan culture with the tourists, so I think that may be the reason for his arrest. His family has no idea where he is imprisoned at the moment,” the source has said, requesting anonymity for safety reasons.
His persecution is seen as arbitrary and in keeping with China’s ongoing crackdown on intellectuals, artists, critics, and activists who are seen as antithetical to President Xi Jinping’s sweeping Sinicization drive being implemented across the Tibetan Plateau.