Rights groups criticise Beijing for jailing monk
Court convicts lama for ‘intentional suicide’
Rights activists yesterday criticised China for jailing a Tibetan lama for 11 years over the death of a young monk who set himself alight, with one calling his prosecution “purely political”.
A court in the southwestern province of Sichuan on Monday convicted the lama for “intentional homicide” and said he had prevented the wounded monk from getting medical treatment, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The United States yesterday meanwhile voiced concern over the sentence given to the Tibetan lama over a young monk’s self-immolation and urged Beijing to address grievances in the region.
The monk, Phuntsog, died in hospital after setting himself on fire on March 16, triggering protests and prompting a clampdown by authorities around the monastery in Sichuan’s mountainous Aba prefecture.
The court’s verdict contradicted earlier assertions by rights groups that monks at the Kirti monastery had rescued Phuntsog from police who began to beat him after extinguishing the flames. As a court prepared to try two more monks yestreday, Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch said the cases were politically motivated.
“This is a patently unjust verdict at the outcome of a purely political prosecution,” he said.
“It comes against a background of unprecedented persecution against the monastery of Kirti, from where the government has already taken into arbitrary detention dozens of monks.”
Kirti monastery has remained extremely tense since security forces shot dead several protesters in March 2008, Mr Bequelin said.