(TibetanReview.net, Mar 10, 2009) — Kunchok Tsephel Gopey Tsang, the co-operator of a website on Tibetan arts and literature since 2005, has been arrested on Feb 26 from his home in Nyul-ra Township of Machu County in Gannan (Tibetan: Kanlho) Prefecture in Gansu Province, reported Dharamsala-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) Mar 7. The reason for his arrest was not clear. Kunchok’s house was ransacked and his computer confiscated.
The Tibetan-language website, www.tibetcm.com, was reported to be under official supervision for many years, and shut down many times between 2007-2008. Kunchok, 38, reportedly founded the website with a young Tibetan poet named Kyabchen Dedrol.
Kunchok had been a Tibetan and English language teacher at the Tibetan Nationality Middle School in Machu County since 2004. After studying Tibetan and Chinese languages in Nyul-ra Township and Machu County schools, he visited India in 1989 and studied Tibetan and English languages for three years at the Tibetan School in Suja, Bir, near Dharamsala. In 1996, he studied English and Chinese languages from Beijing Nationality University and then English language for two years from North Western Nationality University in Lanzhou from 1997.
Kunchok had earlier been detained in about May 2005 and was subjected to two months of torture. It was not clear why.