Dharamshala: Many Tibetans including a Tibetan mother of two young children were arrested on 16 March in Amdo Ngaba region of eastern Tibet following mass protesting after the self-immolation and subsequent beating by Chinese police of a young Buddhist monk called Phuntsok from Kirti Monastery.
According to Yeshe and Kanyag Tsering who live in India, the crackdown and arrests showed no sympathy, even including Tsering Kyi, a mother of two young children from the County's Tiiken village, and also a young man called Phuntsok whose parents and other relatives had previously been arrested, and who was living with Tsering at the time. The arrests left at home two small baby girls, one called Rangwang Lhamo who was born in 2008, making her three years old this year and the other, Gangchen Lhamo, born in June 2010.
Nobody was informed when the mother was arrested and neighbours only found out about the incident later that night, at which time they went to the police station to request the mother's release to care for her two young children, but authorities refused. They then requested for the two baby girls to be handed over to the mother in custody if she could not be released, but this simple and humane request was also refused.
When the youngest baby girl, Rangwang Lhamo, got a cold she had to be taken to the County hospital. Tsering Kyi's husband is Kelsang Jinpa, the editor of ‘Century of I' magazine, who was arrested on the 19th July 2010, just one month after the birth of the youngest daughter. He was accused by the Chinese government of Separatism, and sentenced to three years' prison.
