(TibetanReview.net, Mar26’24) — Hundreds of remaining monks and other Tibetans detained by Chinese police in Feb 2024 for gathering to protest and petition against a major hydroelectric power dam complex being built in Dege County of Kardze prefecture, Sichuan province, have been released. However, they have handed over two of them, still under arrest, for prosecution, while younger monks have been transferred to government-run schools, reported the Tibetan service of rfa.org Mar 25.
Tenzin Sangpo, senior administrator of the local Wonto Monastery, and a village official named Tenzin, arrested on Feb 23, are suspected of having led the protests last month against the Gangtuo Dam project, the report said.
They were among the several detained Tibetans previously reported to have been transferred to the larger, Dege County Detention Centre.
Sangpo and Tenzin have now been handed over to the government Procuratorate Office for criminal investigation and prosecution, the report cited local sources as saying, requesting anonymity for safety reasons.
However, their whereabouts, or the charges against them remain unknown.
“The local Tibetan people are worried that the government will accuse them of having instigated the February protests and being responsible for sharing information with the outside world,” the report quoted one source as saying.
The report also said the released Tibetans had been subjected to severe ill-treatment and brutal beatings, which left some of them handicapped and hospitalized.
They were crammed into crowded cells and subjected to physical abuses and beatings.
The report cited a released monk as having said the detainees were fed such poor quality tsampa (roasted barley flour, a staple Tibetan diet) as to be fit only as animal feed.
“Some days, we were not given any water to drink,” the monk has said. “On other days, when there was water, we were given very little.”
He has said the Chinese police slapped the monks and made them run around the prison grounds as a form of punishment, and to have beaten them severely if they refused to do so.
“One monk was beaten so badly that he could not even speak,” he has said. “He is now under medical treatment.”
Besides, during interrogation, the Tibetans were pressured to incriminate each other, thereby traumatizing them emotionally, the report cited other local sources as say.
Meanwhile, villages and monasteries on both sides of the Drichu (Chinese: Jinsha) river have continued to be under close surveillance, with no outsiders being allowed to enter the township.
All the more than 50 younger monks of Wonto Monastery have been dispatched to the county government school after the protests, the report said. Wonto and nearby Yena Monastery together had around 300 monks before the dam protest crackdowns.
The Gangtuo Dam is part of a plan announced in 2012 by China’s National Development and Reform Commission to build a massive 13-tier hydropower complex on the Drichu. The total planned capacity of the project is 13,920 megawatts.
The project will submerge the ancestrally inhabited homes of around 2,000 Tibetans as well as centuries-old monasteries with priceless artefacts, including murals, dating back to the 13th century.