DHARAMSHALA, July 29: Four Tibetan petitioners who had travelled to China’s capital Beijing requesting for the release of Tulku Tenzin Delek, a highly ranked Tibetan spiritual leader currently serving life-sentence, have been arrested.
The Tibetans from Lithang region of eastern Tibet had left for Beijing on July 9 and were able to discreetly submit petitions requesting for the release of Tulku Tenzin Delek at a few offices in Beijing for eight days, according to exile sources.
However, local Chinese authorities from Nyagchu region of eastern Tibet came to know about their petitioning campaign and immediately dispatched a team of security officials to arrest them.
The four Tibetans were arrested on the night of July 20 and are currently being detained in Gara, a place near Nyagchu.
Tulku Tenzin Delek is a highly revered religious leader and an outspoken admirer and follower of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. Following a series of bomb blasts in 2002 in eastern Tibet, Chinese officials charged Tulku along with Lobsang Dhondup for carrying out the blasts.
Lobsang Dhondup was immediately executed after a closed trial while Tulku was also given the death sentence with a two-year reprieve. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment on January 26, 2005 after an international outcry.
Tulku Tenzin Delek has a history of working for the welfare of local Tibetans in eastern Tibet. His initiations included improvement of healthcare, education and religious institutions. Tulku was also an ardent environmentalist and advocated for the conservation of the environment in the face of China’s rampant logging and mining in Tibetan areas.
The petition, vouching bail security of Tulku Tenzin Delek by over 30,000 Tibetans, strongly denied all the charges levied against him.
Calling Tulku Tenzin Delek their “saviour for this life and the next,” the petition urged for his release on medical grounds or for the reopening of his case. He is reportedly suffering from “chronic cardiac illness and hypertension.”
The petition pointed out that calls for a harmonious society by Chinese leaders can only be realised if the genuine aspirations of the common people were fulfilled.
The four petitioners further noted that they were leading the petition campaign without the knowledge of their local authorities, as several earlier requests with various offices at the local level had gone unheeded.
