From: Tibet-Relay@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: Teachers Faces 42 Years in Prison
Date: 21 Aug 92 04:23:00 GMT
Reply-To: tibet.info@gnosys.svle.ma.us

Original-Sender: robbieb@gn.apc.org


Tibet Information Network / 7 Beck Rd London E8 4RE  UK
ph: (+44-81) 533 5458 / fax: (+44-81) 985 4751
TIN News Update / 20 August, 1992 / total no of pages: 2

- Tibetan Primary School Teacher: 42 Years in Prison -

A Tibetan prisoner who is serving a 19 year sentence for shouting
pro-independence slogans has just received an additional eight
year sentence for shouting out more slogans, according to
unofficial reports from Tibet.

The prisoner, a 63-year old primary school teacher named Jigme
Zangpo, spent fifteen years in prison from 1960 for not punishing
a child who had written an anti-Mao slogan on the wall of the
school toilet.

If he does not shout any more slogans he will be due for release
in the year 2010, when he will have spent 42 years in prison and
be aged 81 years old.

The prisoner has had his current 19 year sentence increased to 27
years because he shouted out a sentence calling for support of
the Dalai Lama while three Swiss diplomats were inspecting
conditions in the prison last year.

The delegation, which included Switzerland's Ambassador to China,
visited Drapchi prison in Lhasa on 6th December 1991. Questioned
by the press 4 weeks later, the diplomats admitted that they had
heard shouting from a small group of prisoners who were
apparently trying to attract their attention.

News of the long sentence handed down to the prisoner is likely
to cause considerable embarrassment to the Swiss Government. "We
are perfectly aware of the significance of such a sentence,"
Chris Meuwly, a spokesman for the Swiss Foreign Affairs
Department, said today.

M. Meuwly said that Bern had already intervened several times
with the Chinese about reports that Jigme Zangpo had been
punished after the incident, and the Swiss Minister for Economic
Affairs raised the matter during a visit to Beijing as recently
as July.

"This kind of incident will possibly have reperscusision on the
way we will promote human rights values in our contacts with the
Chinese authorities," he added. "We shall continue all efforts in
favour not only of Mr Zangpo but of all the cases listed on the
documents we have handed over to the Chinese authorities".

Jigme Zangpo, also known as Tanak Jigme Zangpo or just as
Jigsang, originally from Gyantse in Central Tibet, was known to
have been severely beaten and placed in solitary confinement as
punishment for initiating the protest. But the news this week
that he had received an additional sentence of eight years for
the incident, which lasted only a few seconds, was unexpected.

This is the third time Jigme Zangpo has been convicted of
shouting nationalist slogans. In 1984 he is believed to have
received a 15 year sentence for shouting slogans criticising the
Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping a year earlier. In 1987 or soon
after he received an additional sentence of four years for
shouting pro-independence slogans inside the prison.

By the time he staged his 1991 protest he had been in prison for
so long that a leading human rights organisation in the west had
closed their files on his case, assuming that he had been either
died or been released several years earlier.

This is not his first prison sentence: in 1959 he received a
three year sentence which was later increased to 15 years - some
sources say 20 years - for reportedly "corrupting the minds of
children with counter-revolutionary ideas".

Jigme Zangpo, a teacher at the Number One Primary School in
Lhasa, was arrested because he had failed to report to the
authorities a child who had written "Down with Chairman Mao" on
the wall of the school toilets.

After this sentence was completed, apparently in 1974 or 1979, he
was made to work in a Forced Labour Brigade at the Nyethang lime
works, producing lime, bricks and slabs. If he completes the
current sentence he will spent at least 42 years in prison,
probably longer, for non-violent political offences.

Last week the Chinese Government issued a White Paper on the
Chinese prison system, describing it as "a new type of socialist
prison, where the prisoners are regarded as human beings ... and
where they receive fully humane treatment".

"China's basic goals in criminal reform are to turn offenders
into a different kind of person... and to re-establish these
people as free citizens in society," said  the paper.

The White Paper says that "only 0.319%" of prisoners in China
have received additional sentences. "As the overwhelming majority
of criminals want to reform, only a handful of criminals in
custody in China have been given additional penalties due to new
crimes committed in prison", it added.

Unofficial sources in Lhasa said that the figure in Drapchi is
ten times greater that the average given by the Chinese. At least
ten of the 106 male political prisoners currently in Drapchi are
known to have received at least one additional sentence, and two
Tibetans prisoners were executed in 1990 for starting a pro-
independence group in the prison and planning to escape.

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Newsgroups: soc.culture.china