A Tibetan Writer Sentenced to 4 Years in Jail: Rights Group

TIBET: A Tibetan writer was sentenced to four years in jail last month after helping edit a magazine critical of the Chinese government's brutal crackdown in Tibet since 2008, said the International Campaign for Tibet, a US-based human rights group.

Tashi Rabten, the editor of banned literary magazine Eastern Snow Mountain (Shar Dungri), was sentenced on 2 June by a court in Ngaba in northeastern Tibet. He was detained for a temporary period in July, 2009 before his subsequent arrest on 6 April 2010.

"The banned journal was first published Tibetan language commentary about the protests and crackdown from 2008 onwards, offering a critical perspective reflecting a prevailing sense of despair and loss, but also a way forward," ICT said in a statement.

The rights group said, "copies of the journal were among books seized and burnt by security personnel at a Tibetan school in the Ngaba area in April, 2011".

Three other Tibetan writers who worked with Tashi Rabten in editing the magazine were sentenced on December 30, 2010, on charges of "incitement to split the nation." Dhonkho (pen name: Nyen) and Buddha (pen name: Buddha the Destitute), were sentenced to four years, and Kelsang Jinpa (pen name: Garmi), was sentenced to three years, respectively.

Some articles in Shar Dungri have been translated into English in ICT’s report "A Great Mountain Burned by Fire."

Tashi Rabten (penname Te’urang) was set to graduate from the Northwest Nationalities University in Lanzhou before his detention in April, 2010. He is the editor of the banned literary magazine, Shar Dungri (Eastern Snow Mountain), in which a group of young Tibetan intellectuals associated with the Northwest Nationalities University, known for their progressive and secularist views, wrote about the situation in Tibet following the 2008 unrest and subsequent crackdown.

Tashi Rabten and his fellow editors wrote in the introduction that it was “a sketch of history written in the blood of a generation.”

He also co-authored a collection of essays, titled “Written in Blood,” addressing the situation in Tibet since 2008.

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