BEIJING – China has jailed a Tibetan for five years in connection with the cases of two religious figures sentenced to death for a series of bomb attacks, rights groups said.
Village leader Tserang Dondrup was jailed for organizing a petition with 20,000 signatures on behalf of prominent Buddhist monk Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche, New York-based Students For a Free Tibet said in a statement seen Thursday.
A court in Sichuan province convicted Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche and religious teacher Lobsang Dhondup in December on charges of detonating bombs and inciting separatism for Tibet, a region where sporadic violence is linked to pro-independence forces.
Court, religious and government officials in Sichuan’s Tibetan-populated area of Garze declined comment on Tserang Dondrup’s case.
Chinese police were holding four more people connected to the case, the London-based Free Tibet Campaign said in a statement.
Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche was given a suspended death sentence, which in China is usually commuted to life imprisonment. Lobsang Dhondup was given a straightforward death sentence.
The two are attempting to appeal, but a hearing scheduled for January 10 was canceled abruptly, Radio Free Asia said on Wednesday.
Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche has protested his innocence from jail, saying in a taped statement he had only heard about the bombings for which he was arrested, the U.S. government-backed station said.
A judge who ruled in the original case said Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche had confessed to five of the six explosions between 1998 and 2002 in Garze, it said.
There has been sporadic violence in the Himalayan region where many people resent what they see as Chinese occupation since the People’s Liberation Army marched in and imposed Communist rule in 1950.
