PETER WALKER, Beijing | Thursday
CHINA has released its longest-serving political prisoner, a 76-year-old former elementary school teacher imprisoned since 1983 for campaigning against Chinese rule in Tibet.
Tanak Jigme Sangpo (76) was freed on Sunday on medical parole from Lhasa’s notorious Drapchi prison, where he has been held continuously since 1983, the London-based Tibet Information Network (TIN) said.
He had been told by authorities that a request to seek medical treatment abroad would be ”sympathetically considered”, a TIN statement said.
However John Kamm, a US-based campaigner for prisoners in China, said the former primary school teacher, who has spent 32 years in prison since 1965, did not want to leave Tibet and previously turned down freedom if this was a condition.
”Initially they wanted him to seek medical treatment abroad, which he declined,” said Kamm.
On Sunday, a team of senior officials from Beijing offered him medical parole within Tibet, Kamm said.
”According to Chinese officials, he accepted that happily, and moved in with his niece in Lhasa on Sunday afternoon.”
Officials at the Drapchi jail, officially known as the Tibet Autonomous Region Prison Number One, refused to comment Thursday.
Jigme Sangpo’s latest period in prison began when he was convicted in 1983 of ”spreading and inciting counter-revolutionary propaganda” for putting up posters opposing Chinese rule in Tibet.
His sentence was extended twice due to his behaviour in prison, including shouting ”Free Tibet” during a 1991 visit to the prison by a Swiss delegation, which also saw him severely beaten, rights groups said.
Kamm said decades in prison had not changed Jigme Sangpo’s advocacy of Tibetan rights.
”There is no question about it. His support is very strong. He said that he would not leave prison if that meant he had to leave Tibet.”
This could even see the veteran activist returned to prison yet again, he added.
”If he feels that he could be more effective in prison, I would not put it past him,” Kamm said, adding that Chinese authorities were likely to keep Jigme Sangpo under ”tight surveillance”.
”I am sure that he has not changed his position and that in the confines of his niece’s home and the local community he is making his views known,” he said, describing the former prisoner as ”feisty” and mentally sharp. His release from a jail term not due to end until September 2011 was most likely connected to international pressure, especially from the United States, Kamm said. Jigme Sangpo was one of the prisoners whose plight was singled out by US ambassador to Beijing Clark Randt ahead of a visit to China in February by President George W. Bush. Kamm, who heads the San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation, said he had been told Chinese authorities began approaching Jigme Sangpo soon after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the starting point for a general warming of Sino-US ties. ”They made the decision that they wanted to take advantage of the situation to improve relations, specifically with the United States but more generally as well,” Kamm said. A month before Bush’s trip, another high-profile Tibetan prisoner whose case had attracted attention in the West, music scholar Ngawang Choephel, was also freed early. Jigme Sangpo was first jailed for three years from 1965 for making comments on the Chinese treatment of Tibetans, according to groups who have followed his case. In 1970 he was sentenced to 10 years hard labour for reportedly inciting his niece to flee Tibet and report Chinese abuses to exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. China seized control of Tibet in 1951 in what it called a ”peaceful liberation” and has subsequently exerted a tight and often brutal control over the Himalayan region. – Sapa-AFP