Tibetan man detained months after release from prison after serving five years

Chinese police detained a Tibetan man called Samdup Gyatso in early September 2015 for allegedly violating the terms of his release from prison because he carrying “sensitive leaflet” while travelling from eastern to western Qinghai Province, according to information published by Radio Free Asia.

Samdup Gyatso is currently being detained in Dashi County Detention Centre and nobody is permitted to see him. He was detained just months after release from prison serving five years. He was released in May this year and returned to his hometown in Serthang in Dashi (Ch: Haiyan) County, Tsojang (Ch: Haibei) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province.

On his release, he had been given strict orders not to move out of his hometown and has constantly been under police surveillance since his release. He is suffering from kidney disease which requires him to take regular medication.

TCHRD earlier reported on his arrest and sentencing in 2010. Samdup Gyatso was then 28 years old and had been detained at about 3:20 pm local time on 2 May 2010 by about seven Public Security Bureau (PSB) officials during his brief solo protest in front of Jokhang (Tsuglakhang) Temple in Lhasa. He staged his solo protest during the peak hours of religious activities around the temple, carrying a banned Tibetan flag in hand with another stitched on the back of his shirt and shouted slogans calling for the “quick return of the exiled Tibetan leader to Tibet”,”release Panchen Lama” and “proper allocation and delivery of earthquake relief received from international donors to the much needed nomadic communities in Kyegudo”. He was immediately arrested by PSB officials and whisked off in a police vehicle.

Samdup Gyatso belongs to a nomad family in Serthang county in Tsojang (Ch:Haibei) TAP in Qinghai province. He became a monk in Jabdrung Gartok Monastery and came to India as an exile in 2007 and studied for one year at Tibetan Transit School near Dharamsala. He returned to Tibet through Tibet-Nepal border of Dram in March 2008 and was detained in Shigatse PSB Detention Centre for a month for carrying several books containing speeches by the Dalai Lama. He was later shifted to Lhasa’s Drapchi Prison for the next six months and released in October 2008.