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Tibetan Buddhist leader’s death sentence is affirmed
New York Times, via Contra Costa Times, Jan. 28, 2003
http://www.bayarea.com/
By Erik Eckholm, NEW YORK TIMES
BEIJING – A Chinese court has rejected the appeal of a prominent Tibetan monk whose death sentence for alleged bombing and separatist activities had touched off a world outcry.
The monk, Tenzin Deleg Rimpoche, 52, a religious leader in a remote ethnic Tibetan region of Sichuan province, was convicted in a brief, secret trial in December and given a death sentence with a two-year suspension, which means it is likely to be commuted eventually to a lengthy prison term.
A second man, a former monk named Lobsang Dondrub, 28, was given an ordinary death sentence at the same trial for what are described as his separatist activities, planting of bombs and possession of firearms. With the affirmation of his conviction, as well as Sunday’s announcement — officials assert that he never actually filed an appeal — it appears that he could be executed at any time.
Chinese authorities said the two had confessed to involvement in a bombing in the city of Chengdu in April, which wounded 12 people, and to planning several other bombings over the last two years in western Sichuan, resulting in one death.
But the U.S. government, the Dalai Lama, and rights groups abroad questioned the harsh sentences and the fairness of their trial. The senior U.S. diplomat for human rights, in a recent visit, expressed official concern about “the lack of due process and transparency” in the December trial.
Announcing the latest judgments on Sunday, the official New China News Agency asserted that “the court did not hold an open hearing, because some of the defendants’ criminal acts were related to state secrets.”
In a message said to have been tape-recorded in his jail cell in the city of Garze on Jan. 18, and provided to the U.S. government’s Radio Free Asia, Tenzin Deleg Rimpoche said he was innocent. The monk had studied in India with the exiled Dalai Lama, who opposes violent methods in his campaign for Tibetan autonomy but who is reviled by Beijing leaders as a “separatist.”
“I was wrongly accused because I have always been sincere and devoted to the interests and well-being of the Tibetan people,” Tenzin Deleg Rimpoche said in the taped statement, which his followers say appears to be genuine.
Supporters had hoped that the two men would be granted a retrial, with lawyers of their choice. But lawyers from Beijing who sought to argue the appeals were turned away and the Sichuan courts appointed local attorneys with little influence.
In a ruling announced Sunday, the High People’s Court of Sichuan province affirmed Tenzin Deleg Rimpoche’s conviction and penalty for “inciting the splitting of the country and plotting explosions,” according to the report by the New China News Agency.
“We all feel that this is unjust, because Tenzin Deleg Rimpoche would never have anything to do with these kinds of activities,” said a Tibetan monk in Sichuan reached by telephone, after learning of the denied appeal.
Several other monks in the region have been arrested in connection with the case and some have already been convicted and sent to prison while others await trial.
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