DHARAMSALA, INDIA October 29, 2011—According to information released by the India based Tibetan Center for Democracy and Human Rights (TCHRD), a Chinese authorities in Sichuan province have sentenced a Tibetan school teacher and writer, Jolep Dawa, to a three-year jail term on unknown charges.
The TCHRD release says Jolep Dawa, 39 years old, was handed his sentence by a court in Barkham (in Chinese, Ma’erkang) county in Ngaba (in Chinese, Aba) prefecture.
Dawa, who also edited Tibetan language magazine ”Du-rab Kyi Nga” (This century’s self) as well as convened series of Tibetan cultural symposiums, was arrested in the provincial capital, Chengdu, on October 1st 2010 and was held at Jinchuan County Detention Centre for over a year before he was sentenced.
Another source reported that after Jolep’s detention last year, the Chinese police force raided his family’s book store and confiscated his laptop computer, diary, and some of his literary works.
Earlier when there was a series of protests in different parts of Tibet in Spring 2008, Dawa was also detained for three months in March that year.
Years earlier, Dawa was also detained for around a month for his involvement in a mass campaign to end the use of animal fur on Tibetan clothing.
Sichuan province has been the center of a string of self immolations by Tibetans in teens and 20s to protest against brutal repressions on the Tibetan people and to call for Beijing to allow His Holiness the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet.
