Saturday, April 6, 2013

China Frees Jigme Gyatso, a Tibetan Activist


In Beijing, a Tibetan activist was freed after serving 17 years in prison. The activist Jigme Gyatso returned to his hometown in China’s northeast Gansu Province on Monday. He was reported to be extremely frail after years of torture and poor medical care. “He was limping and reported having heart problems and high blood pressure,” his friend, Jamyang Tsultrim, told Radio Free Asia. He vision was also weak. A former Monk, Jigme Gyatso was first given a 15-year sentence for “leading a counterrevolutionary organization” and him and a group of friends secretly advocated Tibetan independence. He was accused of distributing pro-independence leaflets and hanging a banned Tibetan flag at the Ganden monastery near Lhasa, by the Chinese court in 1966. Although the Chinese government has jailed hundreds of Tibetans for political crimes, his brought a lot of global attention. Manfred Nowak, the United Nations special reporter on torture, spoke to him in 2005 in prison. He urged officials to release him after citing the use of electric batons, exposure to extreme temperatures, and sleep deprivation in Chinese prisons.

This is an example of how China's government is extremely different from our government in the U.S. There has been a rise in self-immolation protests as a result of Beijing’s harsh policies. The treatment of the Tibetans in prison is very eye opening to how different our political system is in the United States. Police brutality is frowned upon in the United States but not in China. This is most likely because China is a communist country.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/world/asia/tibetan-activist-jigme-gyatso-freed-in-china.html

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