News and Views on Tibet

Tibetan monk proclaims innocence after bomb trial

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BEIJING, January 22 – A Tibetan monk given a suspended death sentence for a series of bomb attacks promoting independence has protested his innocence in a taped message from jail, Radio Free Asia said on Wednesday.

Prominent Buddhist monk Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche and religious teacher Lobsang Dhondup were tried in December on charges of detonating bombs and inciting separatism for Tibet, a region with sporadic violence linked to pro-independence forces.

“Whatever (the authorities) do and say, I am completely innocent,” the 52-year-old monk said in a message Radio Free Asia said was recorded on January 18 in his cell in the southwestern province of Sichuan.

“I have always urged people to be kind hearted and caring towards others. Everybody knows what I say and practise,” the U.S. government-funded radio station quoted him as saying.

A Sichuan court sentenced Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche to death, suspended for two years, and a higher court may give him a new trial, the station said in a statement.

Suspended death sentences are usually commuted to life imprisonment. Lobsang Dhondup was given a straightforward death sentence. Radio Free Asia said a retrial scheduled for January 10 was cancelled abruptly.

Court officials and the Chinese Foreign Ministry have declined to comment on the trial.

The Tibetan monk said in the tape he had only heard about the bombings for which he was arrested.

“I was wrongly accused because I have always been sincere and devoted to the interests and well-being of Tibetans,” he said. “I have neither distributed letters or pamphlets nor planted bombs secretly.”

Radio Free Asia said one judge who decided the original case told the station Radio Free Asia Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche had confessed to five of the six explosions between 1998 and 2002 in the Tibetan-populated Garze area of Sichuan.

There has been sporadic violence in the Himalayan region of Tibet where many people resent what they see as Chinese occupation since 1950.

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