One of Tibet’s richest businessmen has been sentenced to life in prison for helping Tibetan exile groups, a human rights organization said on Thursday.
Dorje Tashi was sentenced on June 26 in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, said Urgen Tenzin, director of the India-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
Dorje Tashi, believed to be in his mid-30s, is the operator of the Yak Hotel, the most famous hotel in Lhasa.
China has not reported the sentence, which comes amid increased repression of Tibetan intellectuals after rioting in Lhasa in 2008 in which at least 22 people died.
A duty officer at the Lhasa Intermediate People’s Court, reached by phone on Thursday, said staff were out on holiday.
The general manager of the Yak Hotel confirmed that Dorje Tashi was sentenced, but would not comment further.
The recent crackdown has surprised Tibetan supporters because it includes high-profile Tibetans who were known for working within the system instead of opposing it. Dorje Tashi joined the ruling Communist Party in 2003, the state-run China Ethnic Press reported in March last year.
“People who work within the system in China and Tibet, it would make no sense for them to risk everything to get involved in politics,” said Robbie Barnett, a Tibet specialist at Columbia University. “Tibetans like him, they are the super elite. The severity of the sentence and the exceptional importance of the prisoner are unprecedented.”
According to a Lhasa-based Web site, Tibet Commercial Web, Dorje Tashi has been a delegate to the National Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the government, and was named one of “10 outstanding youth of Tibet.”
Because there has been no word from the Chinese government, the exact charge against Dorje Tashi was not known.
“He was charged with funding some outside Tibetan groups,” Urgen Tenzin said.
He said he didn’t know Dorje Tashi personally.
“Before, we had no contact with him. He’s just a businessman,” he said.
It was not clear if Dorje Tashi, who was detained in 2008, has a lawyer and his family could not be reached on Thursday.
In another high-profile case in June, a Tibetan environmentalist, Karma Samdrup, once praised by the government as a model philanthropist, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of grave robbing and dealing in looted antiquities. His supporters said he was actually being punished for his activism.
In May, the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet published a report saying 31 Tibetans are now in prison “after reporting or expressing views, writing poetry or prose, or simply sharing information about Chinese government policies and their impact in Tibet today.”
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