(TibetanReview.net, Oct16’21) – A Tibetan writer from Qinghai Province arrested by the Chinese police without any explanation two years ago and who remained disappeared ever since has been learnt from unofficial sources to be serving a four-year jail sentence, said the Tibetan Service of rfa.org Oct 15, citing sources in Tibet.
The report cited the sources as saying, speaking on condition of anonymity, that Lobsang Lhundup, known by the pen name of Dhi Lhaden, was sentenced for writing a book that criticized the Chinese rule in the Tibetan areas of the People’s Republic of China and for “creating disorder among the public”.
His disappearance after his arrest meant that his family could not visit him, or deliver clothing or food to him, while also remaining in the dark about his health condition to this day, the sources were cited as saying.
The writer was taken away by Chinese police in Jun 2019 while working at a private cultural education centre in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province.
The only contact his family had with the authorities about him was that they were summoned on Dec 4, 2020 to discuss his case. But they were only told that his trial was pending and they were not allowed to meet him.
Born in 1980 in Pema (Chinese: Banma) County of Qinghai’s Golog (Guoluo) Prefecture, Lhundup became a monk at 11 and studied at Sichuan’s famed Larung Gar Tibetan Buddhist Academy, which later saw the expulsions of thousands of its monk- and nun-students by Chinese authorities.
He taught Buddhism at Drepung and Sera monasteries in Tibet’s capital Lhasa in his late 20s. Lhundup later travelled widely in Tibet and wrote and published books about the protests that rocked the Tibetan Plateau in 2008, criticizing Chinese government policies and rule in the Tibetan areas.
Lhundup is married with a child.
