Dharamshala: - A young Tibetan monk from the Kirti Monastery, Ngaba region of eastern Tibet has been sentenced to three years in jail after tensions run deep at the monastery from April this year, where many Tibetan monks and local Tibetans accuse the Chinese government of trying to threaten their traditional way of life, and taking strong measures to dilute expressions of the religious, linguistic and cultural identity of the Tibetan people.
According to a Tibet source "Kirti monk Donyo Dorjee, age 34, has been sentenced to three years in prison, and is now in the Mianyang prison near Chengdu, Sichuan Province of China.
In April this year, locals and armed security forces clashed at the famous Kirti monastery in Ngaba area of eastern Tibet after a monk, Phuntsok set himself on fire and died in apparent protest against the Chinese rule over Tibet.
We have not been able to discover the details of the place or time of his court hearing, and nothing has been known of his whereabouts since he was arrested from the monastery on April 8," Ven. Losang Yeshe and Kanyag Tsering from the Kirti monastery in exile told The Tibet International.
"He belongs to the Rawe Pelko Tsang house in Cha township, Ngaba county. His father's name is Pelko. He became a Kirti monk at a young age. A further three youths were sentenced and imprisoned at Mianyang, but their names and other details are not known," said the exiled monks.
"These days there are over 300 officials from other counties in Ngaba prefecture staying in Kirti monastery day and night, in addition to 300 county officials conducting ongoing ‘Patriotic Religion' re-education," they added.
The monks said that "the monastery is still occupied and under surveillance by police, army and special police forces inside and out, restricting all activity and movement of the monks."
An official of the Chinese communist regimes however has claimed that the situation at Kirti monastery is "normal" and that relations between monks and police are "harmonious".
He claimed that the monks had "sufficient" supplies and that while measures were in place to "prevent unidentified people from entering", relations between the monks and police had "always been harmonious". The spokesman of Chinese Foreign Ministry, Mr. Hong Lei also warmed on the United States to stop making "irresponsible remarks", following a strong concern expressed by the US State Department on 14 April this year.
Mr. Hong denied reports of a military lock-down during a regular news briefing to reporters in Beijing, saying, "According to our knowledge, the monks in the Kirti monastery enjoy a normal life and normal Buddhist activities, and the local social order is also normal."
