Tibetans sentenced to prison, official admits

BEIJING -- A Chinese official confirmed Wednesday that China has sentenced three more Tibetans to prison in a case that prompted an international outcry last month when another Tibetan was sentenced to death.

The new sentences were first announced by Tibet activists abroad. They accused Chinese officials of failing to inform U.S. officials of the sentences during human rights talks last month.

The three Tibetans were sentenced in two trials in the Ganzi district of Sichuan province in western China, said an official of the local Religious Affairs Bureau who would not give his name.

One defendant, Tserang Dondrup, was sentenced to five years on charges of "separatist activities," the official said. He said he did not know the identities of the other two or their sentences.

A statement issued Wednesday by a coalition of Tibet activist groups said that in addition to those imprisoned, as many as 10 other Tibetan men were detained and released. The Chinese official confirmed additional detentions but said he did not know how many and all had been released.

Court and police officials in Ganzi refused to comment.

The defendants were linked to Lobsang Dhondrup, who was sentenced to death last month on charges of being involved in a bombing in 2001 in Ganzi that killed one person, said the official. Lobsang Dhondrup was an aide to Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist leader who received a suspended death sentence in connection with the bombing.

Activists have appealed to China to overturn the penalties, saying the two men did not get a fair trial. The chief U.S. human rights envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Lorne Craner, said he expressed American concerns about the case during talks last month in Beijing.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said she could not immediately confirm whether Chinese officials had informed Craner about the other Tibetans involved in the case.

Foreign activists say Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche is a community leader in the area, which abuts Tibet and has a large ethnic Tibetan population.

The exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, has urged Tibetans to avoid violence. But militants opposed to Chinese rule have carried out several bomb attacks in the Himalayan region since the mid-1990s.

Communist troops marched into the region in 1950, and Beijing says it has been part of China for centuries.

The statement by the Tibet activists said the man was detained last May after gathering signatures on a petition meant to deter an earlier attempt to arrest Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche.

"If this information proves to be true, then it raises serious concerns about China's sincerity toward the human rights dialogue process," said Mary Beth Markey, director of the International Campaign for Tibet's Washington office.

Also Wednesday, a U.S. government-financed radio network reported that Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche proclaimed his innocence in a tape recording smuggled out of jail.

"The Chinese did not like what I did and what I said. That is the only reason why I was arrested," Radio Free Asia quoted him as saying. It said the recording was made Saturday.