(TibetanReview.net, Dec24’21) – Beating and torture by Chinese police and unbearable forced prison labour has left a young Tibetan woman in Sershul (Chinese: Shiqu) County of Kardze (Ganzi) prefecture, Sichuan Province, crippled and bed-ridden, with doctors being unable to put her back on her feet, according to the monitoring group Tibet Watch Dec 23.
Following her release on Aug 15, 2020 after completing her one year and three months jail sentence, Dolkar, who was crippled and unable to walk, saw a number of doctors but did not see any improvement in her condition.
“She was tortured in prison, forced to lift stones and do other hard labour, and her body is all bruised. She was not given timely medical attention and treatment, and that is why her limbs are crippled and immobilised,” the group quoted a local source as saying.
Dolkar’s two children are said to be cared for by her relatives.
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Dolkar’s arrest was tied to the arrest of her nephew Wangchen and three other local Tibetans. The latter were arrested for celebrating the 30th birthday of the Dalai Lama-recognized 11th Panchen Lama Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who remains disappeared ever since the Chinese government kidnapped him in 1995.
Tibetans in their local town were stated to have been observing his birthday every year on Apr 25 with a mass Apr 20-29 cleaning drive and making of ritual offerings. It was on the last day of this drive in 2019 that Wangchen, Lobsang, Yonten, all in their 20’s, and an unidentified friend hoisted prayer flags on the hillside of Sershul Monastery, undertook a circumambulation of the monastery and made a call for the immediate release of the Panchen Lama.
The three were arrested after they returned home, while the fourth one, being dumb, was let off.
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On May 3, police took away Dolkar from her home. And the Sershul Intermediate People’s Court on May 8 jailed her for one year and three months. She was accused of having collaborated with illegal organisations and shared information about the above arrests with Tibetans living overseas.
At the same hearing, Wangchen was jailed for four and half years. Yonten and Lobsang were fined 15,000 yuan each and made to undergo six months of political re-education on “issues of national security” with the Sershul National Education Department, the group said.