Noted Tibetan political prisoner Jigme Gyatso has been released after 17 years in a Chinese prison and is reported to be in poor health as a result of his treatment, an overseas Tibetan spokesman and US-backed broadcaster said on Tuesday.
The 52-year-old former monk has returned to his hometown in an ethnic Tibetan area of Gansu Province, according to Tashi Phuntsok, spokesman for the Tibetan government-in-exile in India. He said Jigme Gyatso had been released about one year early, likely because of poor health due to harsh treatment in prison.
Radio Free Asia also reported the release, saying he appeared “very weak” upon returning home on Monday after being released two days earlier from Chusul prison near Tibet’s regional capital, Lhasa, where many political prisoners are held. It said friends reported him as walking with a limp and complaining of problems with his heart and vision and other physical complaints related to poor nutrition or lack of medical treatment.
It was not immediately possible to confirm Jigme Gyatso’s release. Chusul prison has no listed telephone number and government and police officials in Lhasa said they had no information on the case. Tibet remains off-limits to foreign reporters without special permission.
Jigme Gyatso was among Tibet’s better-known political prisoners, with numerous organizations including Amnesty International calling for his release. He met also in 2005 with then-UN special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak, who called the following year for him to be set free.
Arrested during a crackdown on dissent in 1996, he was sentenced to 15 years on charges of “inciting splittism” and the now-abolished crime of “counter-revolution.”
Initially held at Lhasa’s notorious Drapchi prison, he was among a group of prisoners who were reportedly beaten and tortured following a pro-independence protest in 1998 coinciding with a visit by EU delegates.
His sentence was then extended by three years in 2004 after he shouted slogans in prison in support of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who fled to India amid an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.
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