Tibetan NGO worker serving life sentence surfaces in Lhasa hospital
Wangdue, a Tibetan NGO activist, who was sentenced to life in 2008 during the widespread protests in Tibet, was recently seen in an army hospital in Lhasa.
Around the end of February 2012, eyewitnesses saw Wangdue in a solitary room in the hospital guarded by three police officers. One of his hands was apparently broken and he had one side of his head shaven, said eyewitnesses, adding these injuries point to the beatings Wangdue must have suffered in prison.
The police officers monitoring Wangdue’s treatment at the army hospital kept strict watch over Wangdue’s movements and no one was allowed to meet him. However, around 20 February 2012, some of his family members were allowed to visit him in the hospital.
Under the Chinese law, a prisoner has the right for his sentence term to be fixed or reduced if he demonstrates âgood behaviorâ during the first 2-year period in prison. As of now, there is no information on Wangdueâs exact years of sentence.
Once a popular HIV/AIDS activist, Wangdue was arbitrarily detained by the Lhasa City Public Security Bureau (PSB) officials from his home on 14 March 2008 in Lhasa. He was later sentenced to life and was transferred to Chushul prison near Lhasa.
Wangdue worked with a foreign NGO organizing HIV/AIDS awareness program in Lhasa City and worked to create HIV/AIDS awareness in various brothels around Lhasa city, in schools in neighboring counties and towns, and organized talk series in various nightclubs in the city. The NGO also published and printed numerous education booklets, posters and pamphlets on HIV/AIDS awareness in Tibetan and Chinese language for free distribution to educate the general public on the disease.
