Tibetan Buddhist monk held in incommunicado detention for eight months

Former library manager of Kirti Monastery arrested under allegations of publishing books from exile monasteries and contacting Tibetans outside Tibet

Lobsang Thabkhe

According to Tibet Watch, Free Tibet’s research partner, Lobsang Thabkhe, a former publisher and library manager of Kirti Monastery in Ngaba, eastern Tibet, was arrested in June last year by the county police and held incommunicado in detention for eight months. 

A Tibetan source told Tibet Watch that the 54-year-old Buddhist monk was allegedly accused of contacting Tibetans in exile and publishing some books from Tibetan monasteries in exile based in south India, where Tibetan refugee settlements had been established following their escape to India in 1959.

“It is unclear what kind of books he published and from which monastery he got the books”, the source explained. 

Ngaba saw a series of self-immolations following the first self-immolation in Tibet in 2009, during which Tapey, a fellow Kirti monk aged 19, protested with a home-made Tibetan national flag with a photo of His Holiness the Dalai Lama at its centre. The authorities responded with subsequent crackdowns, including expanded surveillance and pre-emptive security deployed across Ngaba.

Lobsang hails from village three of Meruma Township (རྨེའུ་རུ་མ་རུ་ཆེན་གསུམ་པ།) in Ngaba. His family and friends are known to be without any information about his current whereabouts.