Reportage – 2007

China releases Ngawang Phulchung after 18-year term

MCLEOD GANJ, India, 29 October 2007 — China released one of the longest-serving Tibetan political prisoners, Ngawang Phulchung, after he had served eighteen years of imprisonment for his demonstrations against Chinese rule of Tibet.

He was released from Chushul prison in Lhasa on or around 21 October 2007.

Ngawang Phulchung was one of the key leaders who demonstrated for an independent Tibet on 27 September 1987, in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.

According to information received by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), the 48-year-old monk was released after completion of his eighteen years and six months of prison sentence served in various detention centres and prisons in Tibet. He had received a six-month sentence reduction in September 2005.

He is said to be in frail physical condition due to the torture and inhuman treatment he suffered during his imprisonment. He is currently believed to be with his family in Toelung Dechen county.

His fearless protests and open expression of his opinions against the Chinese government's oppression of Tibetans resulted in his repeated prison term extensions — apart from the solitary confinements, beatings and tortures that he sustained.

On 27 September 1987, Ngawang Phulchung and 20 other monks of Drepung Monastery staged a peaceful demonstration in Lhasa demanding respect for human rights, including religious freedom and the right to self-determination for Tibetans. This was a turning point in the Tibetan struggle and sparked off a series of public protests. Prior to this day, few Tibetans had dared to express their concerns for fear of ruthless Chinese reprisals. True to their fears, the Chinese violently suppressed the demonstrators who were beaten and detained.

Ngawang Phulchung received the sentence of 19 years' imprisonment and five years' deprivation of political rights on 30 November 1989 before a forced public gathering of 1500 Tibetans. Phulchung was denounced as "organising and joining a counter-revolutionary clique and spreading counter-revolutionary propaganda and inflammatory disinformation, seriously undermining national security and collecting intelligence and passing it on to the enemy." The gathering was told that the monks had "venomously slandered China's socialist system characterized by the people's democratic dictatorship."

The sentencing was broadcast on television, stating that the crimes committed by Ngawang Phulchung and other criminals demonstrate that the so-called human rights, freedoms and democracy played up by separatists both at home and abroad are "nothing but a pack of deceitful lies." The broadcast warned that those who attempt to split the motherland will come to no good end.

Phulchung was also among a group of prisoners who handed a petition protesting against the conditions of detention to a group of visiting American diplomats in March 1991. The petition was confiscated and the prisoners. including Phulchung, were severely beaten and placed in solitary confinement.

According to TCHRD, there are 140 known Tibetan political prisoners currently languishing in a network of Chinese-administered prisons in Tibet. Fifty-one of these are serving prison terms of more than 10 years, and 97 of the total are monks.