By Phuntsok Yangchen
DHARAMSHALA, September 16: Two Tibetans were sentenced to heavy jail terms for adding texts to a picture that they shared on WeChat, the China based popular messaging application, reported Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, who translated the verdict from a Chinese government website.
Chinese authorities alleged that Jamyang Wangtso, 32, and Namgyal Wangchuk, 43, both monk from Wuran Village, had added text on pictures of people wearing fur Chupa (Traditional Tibetan dress) designed to shame the people.
Jamyang Wangtso added the text “The meat-stealer of Chakzamkha Monastery, the scum of the Tibetan community, I am the jackass” on pictures on Wangtse and Sonam Tsering wearing leopard fur chupas.
Wangtso later identified the people in the picture by name and added “We’re the scum”.
Namgyal Wangchuk also received pictures and made a collage with four pictures and added the text reading, “Good environment needs trees, and trees need wild animals for company. Please care for them with compassion, don’t kill them brutally for meat and fur.”
In 2006, during a Kalachakra Initiation at Amravati in Andhra Pradesh, Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama called on the Tibetans to stop using animal skins for dresses. Since then, campaigns to end the use of endangered animal skins and furs spread across Tibet. Tibetans burned skins of endangered animals worth thousands of yuan in a bid to preserve wildlife, following statements by the Dalai Lama about the importance of wildlife conservation and compassion towards animals.
Jamyang Wangtso and Namgyal Wangchuk were charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and were sentenced to seven and five years in prison respectively.
The pictures were shared with a fifteen member WeChat group “Family Reunion” but it is not known how the pictures spread beyond the group. However, the verdict claimed that “the members of the group forwarded the picture to many different WeChat groups,” “Members of the group found out later that the picture had been forwarded widely among the WeChat groups,” and that Jamyang Wangtso and Namgyal Wangchuk had forwarded the pictures to other groups.
WeChat is a text and voice messaging communication service developed by Tencent in 2011 and is widely used by Tibetans inside and outside Tibet. It has become the most used mode of communication through its walkie-talkie style messaging facility. However, activists and experts fear that the app’s voice-messaging service enables security officials to monitor user’s movements in real time and access other information shared via the app.
