(TibetanReview.net, Sep26, 2014) – In a gross display of impunity, a group of Chinese policemen in Chentsa (Chinese: Jianzha) County of Malho (Chinese: Huangnan) Prefecture, Qinghai Province, took away and tortured three Tibetans after they had turned down their offer to join them in a drinking binge during an international archery competition on Sep 11, reported Radio Free Asia (Washington) Sep 24. The Chinese policemen tortured the Tibetans as they drank boxes of beer in the county detention centre, the report added. One of the Tibetans can now neither eat nor speak and can barely move while the conditions of the other two remain unknown.
The incident was reported to have occurred on the second of the three-day competition held in the county’s Markuthang Town. As the spectators had gathered for their dinner, a group of county policemen turned up in inebriated conditions and demanded that the Tibetans join them in drinking toasts. They threatened to close the festival early if the Tibetans refused.
When a Tibetan, described as the elder brother of a businessman named Wangchuk, protested against the harassment, the cops grabbed and shoved him into their truck. Wangchuk and a friend named Tenzin Rinchen, resident of Bayan (Hualong) County in neighbouring Tsoshar (Haidong) Prefecture, tried to intervene. But the police forced them too into their truck.
The cops kept beating them while driving them to the county detention centre.
Later in the night, eight cops brought boxes of beer, hung the Tibetans from ceiling and started drinking. They struck the Tibetans with the empty bottles on their ribs and knees. They later forced them to the floor and urinated on them, an exile Tibetan named Jamyang Dargyal was quoted as saying, citing local contacts.
On Sep 12 morning, Tenzin Rinchen had to be moved to a hospital in the provincial capital Xining where he was found to have six broken ribs. After a week, however, Chentsa police moved him back to a county hospital. Later when told by police to take him home as he had been released, his family took him back to the Xining hospital for further treatment as he could neither eat nor speak and could barely move.
The other two – Wangchuk and his brother – were released on Sep 22, and their conditions remain unknown.