By Tenzin Nyidon
DHARAMSHALA, Jan. 25: Lobsang Tashi, a Tibetan monk from Kirti Monastery in Eastern Tibet’s Ngaba County was reportedly imprisoned by Chinese authorities in 2021 on the charges related to leading prayer ceremonies during the COVID-19 lockdown and refusing to hoist the Chinese national flag at his monastery, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA).
He completes his jail sentence later this year but the news of his arrest and sentence has surfaced now due to the Chinese government’s crackdown on information. Lobsang Tashi, who served as the religious chant master at Kirti Monastery, faced charges related to sending offerings to the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and to the exiled abbot of Kirti Monastery based in Dharamshala, for a prayer during the pandemic.
An anonymous source inside Tibet told RFA that the 43-year-old monk from Kirti Monastery was arrested on June 10, 2021. He was detained for several months during which a secret trial took place. However, the exact date of the trial and its venue could not be ascertained.
Lobsang Tashi, most recently the monastic administrative head of the Dharma Centre at Kirti Monastery, is reported to be serving his jail sentence in Menyang Prison, situated near Sichuan’s Chengdu city.
2 Responses
In occupied Tibet, monks and nuns have been in the forefront of Tibetan resistance movement!Since Taby, the monk from Kirti monastery sacrificed his life for Tibet in 2009, hundreds of monks and nuns have lit their bodies up with raging fire to protest Communist China’s brutal occupation and genocide. Many refuse to fly the communist flag on the monasteries or on the roofs of their houses because Tibetans only fly prayer flags and not any other flag least of all the communist flag which is universally detested. The Chinese communists like the Afghan Taliban force people to fly their communist flag in order to portray them as a sign of people’s acceptance of their brutal occupation. Since they have no mandate from the people, they force themselves upon the people by forcing their blood soaked communist red rag everywhere! In occupied Tibet, it is used to legitimise Chinese occupation. Many Tibetans have been imprisoned for resisting flying of the Chinese communist flag. Tibetans inside Tibet are resisting such Chinese onslaught even at the risk of their lives. However, in exile, the monks who are the torch bearers of the Tibetan independence movement are attacked by anti-Buddhist and pro-China elements! In occupied Tibet, Tibetans are living in constant fear of the Chinese gestapos. No Tibetan is protected! The Chinese gestapos are there to protect the Chinese colonisers and suppress Tibetan resistance! Tsedron, the young beautiful girl from “Tibet university” was arrested for helping others. According to international press report, “she went out of her way to help others in need”. Just like Tulku Tenzin Delek helped people and gained the trust of the people which made him a target of the CCP, Tsedron, it seems was also targeted in similar manner and arrested and was not heard of for half a month when the Chinese gestapos told the family, “she felt down and died”!!! How can a young, energetic and healthy young girl fall and die. According to international report, she was tortured and killed in order to remove her organs”!!! For a long time, thousands of Falung Gung members were incarcerated and murdered for organ harvesting. NOW ORGAN HARVESTING IS BEING DONE ON TIBETANS! The reason the CCP collected the DNA of Tibetans is to check the suitability of the donors for specific needs of the customers who are from all over the world but especially from the gulf states in the Middle East who pay huge sums of money! Besides, CCP leaders are given the highest level of treatment for their survival and there has been cases in China, where children are sent to school never to return! One of the most famous is the disappearance of 15 year old Hu Xinyu from Zhiyuan Middle School in Jianxi province. The child went missing for 106 days before his body was discovered! There were 119 cameras at the school premises but none of them captured him which let to widespread suspicion of the authorities covering up the missing child’s fate. Teams were sent to look for the missing child but nothing was found until one day, a man with a dog found the remains where the authorities had already been to look for the child! It was obviously placed there when the pressure mounted for the authorities. There are many other such mysterious stories of official corruption in which police and school authorities are hand in glove to commit crimes against innocent children! Nothing came out of the autopsy of Hu Xinyu’s case. It is believed he was murdered in order to harvest his organ because through collected DNA test, it suited the patient which happened to be a CCP leader according to Chinese social media. Tibetan girl Tsedron according to foreign news channel also was murdered to harvest her organ which we can surmise was compatible with someone through her DNA which the Chinese collected in occupied Tibet! This is a heinous crime against a child and a Tibetan. It is absolutely shocking beyond belief because it is not only a crime to murder a child and remove her organs but like all organ harvesting procedures, her organs were removed while she was still alive!!! This is the kind of crime the CCP is committing and this evil practice is now being carried out in occupied Tibet! There will be more such “custodial deaths” in occupied Tibet because Tibetan lives are cheap for the Chinese. A first hand experience of how Tibetan students are treated in China and occupied Tibet is told by Tenzin Shinyi, a girl who studied in Eastern Tibet and experienced first hand racism from her Chinese colleagues! (Watch Interview with Tenzin Shinyi on བོད་ཀྱི་དུས་བབ་ on 27th January). She also speaks frankly about the terrible mental scars on Tibetan children caused by Han chauvinism who treat Tibetans like colonial subjects by looking down on them and calling “smelly Tibetans”! Every Tibetan must stand firm in our commitment to restore our independence and not chip away our CORE PRINCIPLE OF OUR NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE which the Dalai Lama has described succinctly in his Strasbourg declaration: “OUR HISTORY, DATING BACK MORE THAN TWO THOUSAND YEARS, HAS BEEN ONE OF INDEPENDENCE. AT NO TIME, SINCE THE FOUNDING OF OUR NATION IN 127 BC HAVE WE TIBETANS CONCEDED OUR SOVEREIGNTY TO A FOREIGN POWER”. THIS IS THE FOUNDATION OF OUR STRUGGLE! IF WE CHIP AWAY THIS FACT FOR POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY, THERE WILL BE NOTHING LEFT TO FIGHT FOR AS THE DRIVING FORCE TO RESIST CHINESE OCCUPATION AND SUBJUGATION.
Why is it a big deal to send offerings in return for a prayer from HH Dalai Lama and Kirti Rinpoche? It is not like this lama engaged in explicit political subversion or riot. China must stop this right now. Lots of chinese buddhists regularly gets blessings from HH in Dharamsala, and one chinese woman even attacked Tibetan princess Lhagyari Namgyal Dolkar with a scissor and was cutting photos of political prisoners that were displayed in the market.