Dissident writer passed away after his health deterioted from torture in prison
Ra Tsering Dhondup
Ra Tsering Dhondup, Tibetan political prisoner and writer passed away on 15 September 2021 after struggling for eight years to recover from deteriorating health following his release from a three-year prison sentence. He was only 34 years old at the time of his death.
According to the source, Ra Tsering was arrested in 2010 on allegations of editing and publishing a magazine that detailed the real situation of Tibet after the 2008 protests against Chinese rule swept across the three historical provinces of Tibet. The Chinese security forces' brutal crackdown on the protests led to hundreds of arrests and deaths. Entitled Sonmig (Tib:གསོན་མིག), roughly translated as ‘living eyes', meaning eyewitness, the magazine's publication was an extremely risky and courageous undertaking by the monk writer who also wrote under the pen name, Shinglo Marpo (Tib:ཤིང་ལོ་དམར་པོ་།), meaning Red Leaf.
He was arrested from his hometown of Serdiu Rongtha, Khyungchu County in eastern Tibet. Three other friends of Ra Tsering Dhondup were arrested under the same accusations of being involved in “inciting separatism”, a catch-all term routinely placed on innocent Tibetans who exercise their right to freedom in their occupied homeland.
Ra Tsering was initially detained in Barkham, then handed a three-year prison sentence by the Intermediate People’s Court in Barkham and sent to Mianyang Prison. He was released in 2013 in very poor health. His family members continued to seek medical care and look after him throughout the years of his deteriorating health. Despite a liver disease that was worsening and being constantly kept under surveillance, he published a poetry book entitled Ngultrak (Tib:རྔུལ་ཁྲག), which translates to Sweat and Blood, as well as other stories and articles.
Torture in Mianyang Prison
Systematic torture and denial of medical care in Mianyang Prison led to the death of 43-year-old Tibetan political prisoner Choekyi on 7 May 2020. He was imprisoned for wearing a shirt with Tibetan texts of birthday wishes to His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Amongst the many Tibetans previously released from Mianyang Prison in extremely poor health are:
60-year-old Phurbu Tsering Rinpoche, a highly revered abbot of Pangri and Ya-tseg Nunneries in Kardze who was arrested on 18 May 2008 and accused of ‘illegally possessing weapons’. An eyewitness who saw him in the prison described that he had become emaciated and almost unrecognizable.
Tibetan teacher and musician Jamyang Kunkhen, who staged a solitary protest to show solidarity for the arrest of a respected community leader Rongye Adrak and was released with hearing loss, failing eyesight, and contorted lips, after nine years of torture in prison.
Dolma Tso, a mother of a 14-year-old daughter, was no longer the cheerful woman her villagers remembered after spending three years in Mianyang prison. She had only helped move the self-immolated dead body of Kunchok Tseten, and upon her release she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.