(TibetanReview.net, Sep18’25) – In another joint communication from the United Nations in Jul 2025, a group of six rights experts has asked China to account for the arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment, and imprisonment of a Tibetan teenager in 2015-16 for staging a peaceful human rights protest demonstration. The experts have made it clear that the case of Namkyi, from Ngaba (or Ngawa, Chinese: Aba) prefecture, Sichuan Province, illustrates violations of international human rights law, including protections against torture, arbitrary detention, and enforced disappearance.
Namkyi escaped to India in 2023 and testified at the UN Human Rights Council, Geneva, earlier this year. The six UN Special Rapporteurs and Working Groups wrote their joint communication on Jul 16 and have released it after the mandatory stay of 60 days.
Namkyi was 15 when she took out a peaceful march with her cousin in Ngaba, carrying portraits of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the locally prominent religious leader Kirti Rinpoche, both living in exile. Both the protesters were violently taken away from the spot by Chinese police just 10 minutes later.
The allegation is that she was then subjected to repeated beatings, sleep deprivation, and extreme heat exposure during interrogations. She was accused of “betraying the Chinese state” and pressured to confess to fabricated crimes. For more than a year after arrest, her family was not informed of her whereabouts, meaning she effectively disappeared.
She was eventually tried in Nov 2016 in the prefecture’s Trochu (Chinese: Heishui) County People’s Court on charges of “separatist activities” and jailed for three years. The UN experts have noted that her trial fell short of fair trial guarantees and that she had refused prosecutors’ offers to reduce her sentence in exchange for false confessions.
In Sichuan Province Women’s Prison, Namkyi was stated to have been forced into hard labour, subjected to harsh conditions, denied adequate food and medical care, and placed under strict surveillance that prevented contact with other Tibetan inmates. Even after her release in 2018, she remained under heavy restrictions, including surveillance, intimidation, and pressure on her family and community.
After fleeing her homeland, Namkyi reportedly continued to face harassment through threats directed at her relatives.
The UN experts have sought to know the legal basis for Namkyi’s arrest and detention, why her family was not informed of her trial, and whether investigations had been conducted into her allegations of torture and enforced disappearance. They have stressed that her case raised wider concerns about reprisals against Tibetans exercising their right to freedom of expression, assembly, and religion.
The experts have said: “We are also concerned that the detention and charges against Namkyi, and the pressure on her family seem to be measures that have been adopted in direct retribution for Namkyi’s exercise of her right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and her work to protect religious freedom in Tibet. Such practices create a profound chilling effect, which deters citizens from expressing their opinions and views, as well as discouraging human rights defenders from carrying out their legitimate work.”
Namkyi travelled to Geneva in Feb 2025 to join a five-day advocacy campaign organised by the Tibet Bureau Geneva, ahead of the 58th session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). She also met with staffers of UN Special Rapporteurs, officials from UN Permanent Missions, and representatives of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The joint communication was signed by Mary Lawlor, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; Matthew Gillett, Vice-Chair on Communications of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; Gabriella Citroni, Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances; Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression; Gina Romero, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; and Alice Jill Edwards, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
(Source: Tibet.net, Sep 18, 2025)