prisonment in Tibet, as outlined in Asia Watch's previous two reports on the region. Tibetans have told us that they are afforded no independent legal counsel when brought to trial, nor can they mount anything that might reasonably be recognized as being a proper legal defense. The use of torture, mentioned in the account, is unfortunately (as will be discussed below) an all-too-familiar feature in cases of political imprisonment and interrogation in Tibet.

It was announced on January 19, 1989, ten days alter the hearing, that Lobsang Tenzin had been given a death sentence with a two-year suspension of execution. Another one of the four accused, Sonam Wangdu, was sentenced to life imprisonment. Various other Tibetans were also sentenced at the same time and received sentences ranging from three to filteen years imprisonment.82

In addition, the group sentenced on January 19 included Yulo Dawa Tsering, a lama from the monastery of Ganden who is currently perhaps the most well-known Tibetan political prisoner. Arrested in December 1987 for having "spread reactionary views, such as Tibetan independence, to foreign reactionary elements who came to Tibet as tourists," 83 he was subsequently accused of having "colluded with reactionaries abroad to try to overthrow the people's government and the socialist system,' ," 84 and was eventually charged with the crime of spreading counterrevolutionary propaganda.85

According to Tibetan exile sources and others, 86 the real reason for his continued detention concerns comments that he made to a visiting Italian, Dr. Stefano Dallari, who videotaped a conversation with him and another monk, Thubten Tsering, during which he made strong remarks in favor of Tibetan independence. He received a sentence of 14 years imprisonment.87

The group sentenced probably also included Chungdag, a monk from the monastery of Ganden, who received a seven-year prison sentence for participation in the 1987 protests and was expelled from the Tibet branch of the China Buddhist Association along with Yulo Dawa Tsering in September 1989.88

In February 1990, Tibetan exile sources reported that Lobsang Tenzin was slated for imminent execution. According to these reports, the two-year reprieve granted him was meant to be effective from the date of his arrest (although Chinese sources have not confirmed this). Amnesty International issued an Urgent Action/Fear of Execution alert concerning Lobsang Tenzin, while Asia Watch cabled Chinese Prime Minister Li Peng on February 22, 1990 stating that, given the circumstances of his trial, he had clearly not received a fair and impartial hearing, and that therefore he should not be subjected to execution.

* * *

On March 16, 1990, the Chinese Embassy in Washington issued a statement that "Lobsang Tengin [sic] was the principal culprit in the murder of a member of the armed police. * He was found guilty and sentenced to death with a two-year repriev [sic] by the People's Court of the Municipality of Lhasa on January 23, 1989. The rumour that 'he will be executed in March 1990' is purely fabricated." We would note that a death sentence still hangs over Lobsang Tenzin.

5. Use of Torture against Prisoners

Asia Watch is seriously concerned about conditions of detention for political prisoners in Tibet, particularly in regard to the use of torture. By all accounts, torture is widely practiced by the region's security forces. Both of our previous reports on Tibet documented cases of torture, and many similar accounts have since been presented both by the foreign media and by Tibetan exile sources. The PRC in 1988 ratified the United Nations' Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishmant, thereby assuming an international obligation to refrain from:

66#

* *

any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person by or at the instigation of or with the con

*

82 82 "Lhasa Rioters Are Sentenced," Beijing Review, January 30-February 5, 1989; and "Tibetans Sentenced for Role in March 1988 Řiots," Xinhua, January 19, 1989, in FBIS, January

23.

83 Evading Scrutiny, p. 10.

84 "Tibetan Buddhists Charged With Counterrevolution," Xinhua, September 21, 1989; in FBIS, same day.

85 Evading Scrutiny, p. 6.

86 An Urgent Action notice sent out by Amnesty International and an appeal from the Tibetan exile authorities. Amnesty UA ASA 17/03/89.

87 "27 Rioters Sentenced," Tibetan Review, February 1989, p. 5.

88 "Tibetan Buddhists Charged With Counterrevolution," Xinhua, September 21, 1989; in FBIS, same day.

sent of or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. (Article 1)

Under the terms of this convention, the PRC authorities are required to investigate allegations of torture fully and fairly, and to duly punish those responsible. In addition, the government should be called upon to ensure that access to Tibet for concerned observers should be unhindered, and to facilitate independent monitoring of the situation. China's ratification of the UN's Convention Against Torture imposes solemn legal obligations upon China which the international community has a legitimate interest in seeing kept. China's claim that the persistent allegations of torture in Tibetan prisons represent foreign interference in China's internal affairs is thus untenable.

Accounts of torture in Tibetan prisons are fairly numerous. Although a certain proportion of these come from Tibetan exile sources, they differ very little from those obtained from independent journalists and from other reports that Asia Watch has previously been able to verify. During the visit of Senator Leahy's group to Tibet in August 1988, for example, Tibetans told the group members and journalists accompanying them of various forms of torture that had been used against participants in the demonstrations in 1987 and 1988.89 One of the accompanying journalists reported an account given to him by a recently released monk concerning the conditions of imprisonment that Tibetan political prisoners had endured in the altermath of the March 1988 protest in Lhasa. The monk told of savage beatings by the police, administered with fists, feet, sticks and rifle butts, resulting in broken bones, hearing loss and other such traumas. In addition, he described the application of shocks with electric cattle prods, and the suspension of prisoners by ropes, often resulting in dislocation of the shoulders. The monk also revealed that those treated most harshly were nuns who had taken part in the demonstrations.9o Similar stories have been told to other visitors as well.91

The full transcript of the monk's account, obtained from Tibetan exile sources, contains the following details. The monk was held in Gutsa prison, one of the prisons in the Lhasa region mentioned in our first report on human rights conditions in Tibet.92 He was held in a room approximately six feet by 10 feet with six other prisoners. Their food consisted of the black tea, plain bread rolls and meager boiled vegetables that we saw mentioned in another Tibetan's account of his imprisonment in our first report. 93 Prisoners who had been tried and sentenced were allowed visitors, but other prisoners were denied this right; indeed, their relatives were never informed by the authorities as to their whereabouts.

* *

According to the monk, he and all his cellmates were severely beaten at the time of their arrest. In addition, prisoners were verbally abused and ordered to admit their guilt and to name other participants in the demonstration. According to the monk, prisoners were told (regarding their advocacy of Tibetan independence): "You are all doing these things under the influence of a few bad foreigners "The majority of the officials carrying out the beatings were Tibetans, according to the monk; in his case a Tibetan and a Chinese beat him while another Tibetan named Phurbu, around 30 years old and from the Chushul area south of Lhasa, questioned him.

Tibetan exile sources have provided extensive information on torture, most of which is consistent with information obtained elsewhere by Asia Watch. A Tibetan exile who accompanied several Italian journalists in Lhasa as they sought out former detainees recounted the case of a nun who had been arrested after taking part in demonstrations in April 1988. Placed in Gutsa prison, she was beaten and attacked by dogs under the control of her guards. Her diet was restricted to the meager rations of bread rolls and boiled vegetables that we mentioned earlier. Another nun whom she encountered in prison told her of being subjected to torture with an electric cattle prod that included the application of the instrument to her genitals. Others with whom the Tibetan exile spoke were also subjected to severe beatings and torture with an electric cattle prod.

Various letters and documents from Tibet describing the situation of prisonershave been circulated by Tibetan exile authorities. One concerns a group of nuns

89 Daniel Southerland, "3 Senators Query Chinese On Tibetan Human Rights," The Washington Post, August 26, 1988.

90 Daniel Southerland, "Tibetan Tells of Torture," The Washington Post, September 6, 1988. 91 See J. Michael Luhan, "How the Chinese Rule Tibet," Dissent, Winter 1989; Mark Baker, "The Ugly Side of Tibet," The Herald (Australia), July 26, 1988; and "Prisoners in Tibet Beaten and Tortured," The South China Morning Post, November 2, 1988.

92 See Human Rights in Tibet, p. 32.

93 See Human Rights in Tibet, p. 29.

from the Gari and Shongseb nunneries in the Lhasa area imprisoned in Gutsa. Nuns from these convents, along with nuns from the Chusang nunnery, also in the Lhasa vicinity, demonstrated in the Tibetan capital several times in April 1988. According to the letter, one nun named Gyaltsen Chondzom was severely beaten while manacled and had dogs set upon her in prison. Another nun from Shongseb was forced to kneel on ice for a long period and was tortured with an electric cattle prod that was applied to various parts of her body, including the genital area.

Similarly, in a Channel 4 (UK) television broadcast on November 9, 1988, a group of nuns interviewed in Tibet after their release from prison described having been stripped and then poked with electric cattle prods. 94 Another account of the arrest of these nuns that appeared in the West in 1989 detailed beatings, the application of electric cattle prods, attacks by trained dogs, and other forms of torture perpetrated on one nun during interrogation, as questioners sought to make her name others involved in planning the demonstration.95

Another letter in this batch of material dealt with the case of Gyaltsen Chopel, one of the four Tibetans arrested for the murder of a police official during the March 1988 protest. (Gyaltsen Chopel's trial proceedings werer summarized in the previous chapter.) The letter noted that he and almost all others arrested in the wake of the March 1988 protest were subjected to harsh beatings. At the time the letter was written (August 1988) his wounds were said to be healing, which may indicate that the torture, aimed at extracting a confession of guilt, had been applied in the earliest stages of imprisonment.

In the fall of 1989, the U.S. organization Physicians for Human Rights published a report on torture and imprisonment in Tibet, based on interviews with Tibetans in India undertaken with the assistance of the Tibetan exile authorities. Those interviewed had been arrested during the demonstrations in Tibet in 1987 and 1988. The report detailed prison conditions and patterns of torture, including the use of beatings, electric cattle prods, prolonged suspension by ropes and other methods.96

Yet another account was transmitted through Tibetan exile sources, from a prisoner who was among those released in the summer of 1988. He also describes the use of electric cattle prods, suspension by ropes for hours at a time, beatings, and also the infliction of cigarette burns and scalding with boiling water. While it is impossible to verify all of these practices without better access to Tibet and Tibetan prisons, a consistent pattern of the use of torture against political prisoners is, we believe, now well established.

Some months after the imposition of martial law in Lhasa in March 1989, a Brit ish journalist, interviewing Tibetans who had been released from prison, was told of a female university student who had been crippled as a result of beatings sustained during her imprisonment. She had been arrested after the imposition of martial law for having put up Tibetan independence posters. He was also able to interview Tibetans who bore scars that they said were left by prison torture. One of them told of having his arm tied behind his back by the thumb for three days alter his arrest, and of then being tortured with an electric cattle prod as interrogators tried to force him to involved in leading the March 1989 protests.97 Another reporter encountered a monk who had been held for four months in solitary confinement alter the March violence and tortured with electric cattle prods and beatings. 98

In November 1989 Tibetan exile authorities reported the death in prison of Chonze Tenpa Chophel on August 25, due to torture. Chonze had been arrested on November 15, 1987, for possession of a copy of the Dalai Lama's autobiography. His wife had previously been imprisoned, as had a son Lobsang Chodak, who was adopted as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International during the period of his imprisonment several years ago. Lobsang Chodak was shot in the legs during the

94 Nancy Banks-Smith, "Facing a Land of Fear," The Guardian, November 11, 1988; the article discusses the documentary film by Vanya Kewley: "Tibet-A Case to Answer," which appeared in Channel 4's "Dispatches" series.

95 "

'Some used electric shocks, some beat us over the head with handcuffs, some beat us with rifles,' The Guardian, November 8, 1989. Most recently Tibetan exile sources have claimed that three of the four nuns interviewed for the Channel 4 broadcast have been arrested again. They are named as Tenzin Wangmo, Gyaltsen Yangzom, and Gyaltsen Lochoe. Another nun, Gyaltsen Chokyi, was also arrested with them. The whereabouts of the fourth nun, Tsering Dolma, are not known. See "Nuns Interviewed in Kewley Film Arrested," Tibetan Review, April 1990, p. 4.

96 John Ackerly and Blake Kerr, The Suppression of a People: Accounts of Torture and Impris onment in Tibet, Physicians for Human Rights, November 1989.

97 Guy Dinmore, "China Denies Allegations of Prison Beatings, Torture in Tibet," Reuters, October 22, 1989.

98 Lewis M. Simons, "A Populace Seethes," The Boston Globe, December 7, 1989.

December 1988 Human Rights Day demonstration and is said to have been crippled. A daughter, Nyima Tsamchoe, also known as Lhakdon, has been imprisoned for over a year. .99 It is likely that the family's longstanding record of dissidence accounts for the particularly harsh treatment reportedly meted out to Chonze.

Asia Watch concludes that the political imprisonment of Tibetans who advocate independence for Tibet remains a particularly serious area of human rights violations, and one which the Chinese government shows no intention of handling in a manner compatible with international standards of respect for human rights. The grave nature of such abuses in Tibet is compounded by persistent, credible reports of the use of torture against political prisoners in the region. China's response to legitimate international concern in this matter has been aimed at obfuscating the problem. Having criminalized peaceful dissent about Tibet's political status and about Chinese policies in the area, the Chinese authorities simply deny that political imprisonment and torture take place there at all.

A Western journalist who visited Lhasa in October 1989, for example, was told by Wang Naiwen, spokesman for the TAR regional Public Security Bureau: "We have strict rules and regulations. All prisoners receive fair treatment. No one has been beaten or tortured. I am absolutely sure of this." 100 Rather than adopting effective preventive and remedial measures, the Chinese authorities have instead taken strenuous steps to insure that concerned outside observers are denied, for the most part, any real possibility of investigating conditions in Tibetan prisons.

6. Restrictions on Contact between Foreigners and Tibetan Dissidents

Periodically, the Chinese authorities have claimed that foreigners were intimately involved in the planning and execution of demonstrations in Tibet. Since the recent round of demonstrations began, in September 1987, the Chinese authorities have shown mounting hostility toward individual travelers in Tibet, and have undertaken a series of measures apparently designed to prevent foreign observers from witnessing human rights abuses in the region.

First, in the wake of the demonstrations of late 1987, all tourists were rounded up and ordered out of Lhasa, leaving only a handful of Wersterners, mostly teachers and researchers, in the area. A prohibition on individual tourists (that is, those not in chaperoned tourist groups) was then imposed, in an attempt to effectively deny Tibetan dissidents a conduit to the outside world and thereby institute a monopoly on information coming out of Tibet. For a period this move did have the practical effect of blocking individual tourists to any large degree from spending time in Tibet. Eventually, though, people began to get around this policy by a variety of means, including that of forming themselves into very small groups just prior to visiting Tibet. Sometimes composed of only one couple, these groups were able to stay in the cheaper hotels in the Tibetan quarter, as opposed to the more expensive hotels such as that run by Holiday Inn, which are located well away from the quarter. By the summer and fall of 1988, the presence of individual Western tourists in Lhasa had once more grown, although the level was nowhere as high as before. After the imposition of martial law in Lhasa, individual tourism to the region again virtually ceased.

In order to curtail free dialogue between Tibetan dissidents and the outside world, foreigners have been subjected to deliberate harassment. A British worker in Lhasa during the period after the first demonstrations in the fall of 1987 described the hostility toward foreigners exhibited by the authorities as being akin to a witch hunt, with local TAR television broadcast footage of foreigners standing in the vicinity of demonstrations, a pair of British teachers having their home ransacked prior to being placed under house arrest and expelled, and Lhasa students being subjected to a campaign of negative lectures and propaganda about foreigners. 101 It goes without saying that Tibetans who are believed to have done no more than inform foreigners about Tibetan dissatisfaction with China's presence in Tibet, or about human rights abuses in the region, have been harshly treated.

Perhaps the most striking example of official hostility towards foreigners in Tibet occurred in connection with the December 10,1988 Human Rights Day protest in Lhasa, wherein a 26-year-old Dutch woman was wounded. Early Chinese reports on

99 "Bod-nang rgyal-gces dpa'-bo bsad dang gsod-rgyu'i skyo-gnas," Shes-bya, November 1989, p. 15. Nyima Tsamchoe was listed as number 58 on the list of prisoners appended to Evading Scrutiny.

100 Guy Dinmore, "China Denies Allegations of Prison Beatings, Torture in Tibet," Reuters, October 22, 1989.

101 Julie Brittain, "Britain Bows to Chinese in Tibet Teacher Project," The Hongkong Standard, August 6, 1988.

the incident seemed to insinuate that she was in some measure to blame for her wound simply for having been in the vicinity of the demonstration; furthermore, both the fact that she had visited Tibet repeatedly during 1988 and her possession of a copy of the Dalai Lama's autobiography were also held to be suspicious.102 In March of last year her case was once more brought up by the Chinese authorities in the wake of the violence that preceded the imposition of martial law. Yan Mingfu, a senior Communist Party official, accused her of entering Tibet several times under various pseudonyms in order to organize the December 10 "riot" at the behest of an overseas separatist group.

Moreover, Yan Mingfu's remark to the effect that "this information was offered by Tibetan patriots and this showed that most Tibetan lamas are patriotic" 103 gives grounds for serious concern as to the manner in which such information is obtained from Tibetans, and particularly from prisoners who were arrested immediately after the March 1989 violence. Chinese press reports, for example, described the voluntary surrender of people who had participated in the protests and who then proceeded to inform against other participants. 104 A more recent British press story, drawn from interviews with nuns who had been arrested following a demonstration in Lhasa in April 1988, described the beating of the nuns when they would not or could not answer, to the satisfaction of their questions as to who had been behind their protest.105

Following the December 10 demonstration, the movements of foreigners in Lhasa were sharply restricted. A number of reports indicated that foreigners were confined to their hotel rooms and that the rooms were searched by security personnel. According to one report, the police were searching for foreign journalists in particular, 106 while another said that they were looking for any foreigners who had wit nessed the demonstration.107

Actions directed at foreign journalists attempting to report on events and conditions in Tibet have also been noticeable. As we mentioned in our earlier reports, journalists have been expelled from Lhasa and barred from entering Tibet except in rare instances. In an incident in Beijing a few days alter the Human Rights Day demonstration, a reporter was held for two hours by the authorities for attempting to cover a march by Tibetan students in the Chinese capital protesting the government's violent suppression of the Lhasa Lhasa demonstration.108 On December 30, 1988, a further demonstration was held in Lhasa by Tibetan students calling on the authorities to respect Tibetan culture and to stop using firearms against Tibetans. Three Western tourists who tried to photograph the demonstration were stopped by Chinese security personnel and eventually made to surrender their film and pay fines for violating regulations against photographing demonstrations. One of them reported having been held by plainclothes security forces at gunpoint. 109

In an apparent reaction to a British television broadcast highly critical of China's record in Tibet, which had been filmed surreptitiously by someone travelling through various Tibetan areas in the TAR and in neighboring provinces, unauthorized filming in Tibet was banned by the authorities in late March 1989.110 In a re

102 See Nicholas D. Kristof, "China Reports One Monk Killed in Tibet Clash," The New York Times, December 12,1988; "Situation Tense; Dutch Woman Held," AFP, December 12, 1988; in FBIS, same day; and "Says Netherlander Can Leave Tibet," Xinhua, December 15, 1988; in FBIS, same day.

103 "Comment on Martial Law," Xinhua, March 21, 1989; in FBIS, March 22.

104 See "Rioters Surrender to Police," Xinhua, March 9, 1989, published in Renmin Ribao on March 10, in FBIS, March 10; and "Streets Remain Quiet," Renmin Ribao, March 11, 1989, in FBIS, March 13.

105 "

'Some used electric sticks, some beat us over the head with handcuffs, some beat ys with rifles,' The Guardian, November 8, 1989.

106 Danny Gittings, "Tibetans Killed by China Police," The Guardian, December 12, 1988. 107 "Tibetan Riot Results in 1 Death, 13 Injuries, Tighter Chinese Rule," The Washington Times, December 12, 1988.

108 Nicholas D. Kristof, "Tibetans Hold Protest in Beijing," The New York Times, December 19, 1988.

109 "Two Injured in 30 Dec Demonstration in Tibet," The Hong Kong Standard, in FBIS, January 3, 1989; Daniel Southerland, "Students Defy Protest Ban in Tibetan City," The Washington Post, January, 1, 1989; and Robbie Barnett, "Police Grab Tourist in Tibet Protest," The Independent, January 2, 1989.

110 "Tibet Bans Unapproved Shooting of TV Films," Radio Lhasa, March 20, 1989; in FBIS, March 21. In addition, videotapes of disturbances in Tibet made by foreigners who just happened to be in Lhasa when they occurred have occasionally appeared on Western television. More recently a videotape made by Tibetan security personnel of the demonstration and ensuing violence that broke out in Lhasa on March 5, 1988, was gotten out of Tibet. Parts of it, showing Chinese personnel severely beating unarmed monks was shown on the American program "20/20" in the spring of 1989.