Tibetan-language advocate Tashi Wangchuk in an undated file photo. Wangchuk has been released on 28 January 2021 after five years behind bars. File photo/FreeTibet.org
Tibet Sun Newsroom
McLEOD GANJ, India, 29 January 2021
Tibetan-language advocate Tashi Wangchuk has been released after five years in prison, according to a press release by Free Tibet, a Tibet Support Group in the United Kingdom.
The group, quoting a tweet by Wangchuk’s Chinese lawyer Liang Xiaojun, said that Wangchuk was freed on Thursday, and was brought to his family in Trindu County in Kham (what China calls Chengdu, Qinghai), after completing a five-year prison sentence.
Liang wasn’t clear how free Wangchuk really is, due to lack of contact with his family.
Wangchuk was arrested in January 2016 after a New York Times interview in 2015 about his work protecting Tibetan language and culture. He was held without trial for two years, and was sentenced to five years in prison in May 2018 for “incitement to separatism”.
He was tortured and suffered extreme inhumane and degrading treatment during the early days of his detention. He was subjected to arduous interrogation and was repeatedly beaten. His interrogators also threatened to harm his family.
Tibetans and global Tibet activists expressed concern for Tashi Wangchuk’s safety and well-being, as for five more years he will be deprived of political rights, which means that he will not have the rights to “free expression, association, assembly, publication, vote, and to stand in elections”, and will also remain under constant surveillance.
The CCP has made learning Tibetan language a crime by branding it as “unconstitutional”. This is despite the fact that the Chinese constitution is said to have enshrined the rights of the “minority” languages to be protected!
Tashi Wangchuk’s release coincided with the shocking news of learning Tibetan a crime in Tibet. This is a failure of the U-May Lam policy which postulated that the policy was a means to save Tibetan rights by giving up independence and capitulate to the whims of the CCP.
Now, it is very clear with banning of Tibetan language and forcing monks and nuns to wear military fatigue and making them dance and being sent to schools instead of learning Buddhist philosophy in their monastery, the pretext for adopting the Middle Path has done absolutely nothing to protect Tibetan language, culture or religion. It’s an abject failure!
The Tibetan leaders can’t be coy about this any more and peddle the same excuse of so called protecting Tibetan culture because its simply not happening. You can’t pull the wool over the Tibetan people any more.
Tibetan independence advocates have been subjected to taunts of anti-Dalai Lama by those sycophants who made the art of sycophancy a veritable virtue. Now, it’s up to the leadership and those who have supported this policy to come out with an explanation. It can’t be business as usual because time is not on our side.
Tibet is fast disappearing into a sea of Chinese colonisers, official correspondence and sign boards in Tibet are ALL IN CHINESE which makes the Tibetans feel they are living in a foreign land in their own country! The Middle Path people duped the ordinary people into believing that this indeed must be to save our language, culture and religion but it turns out to be a hoax!