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15 July 2015

Tibetan lama dies in Chinese prison

13 July 2015

Family call for release of the body of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, imprisoned for 13 years on what rights groups said were false charges over a 2002 bombing

A Tibetan lama, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, has died in prison in China 13 years into a sentence for what human rights groups say were false charges that he was involved in a park bombing. He was 65.

Relatives were informed of his death on Sunday, the New York-based Students for a Free Tibet said. Police in Sichuan province, south-west China, confirmed that he had died but declined to give further details.

Tenzin Delek was arrested in 2002 in relation to an explosion in Chengdu city on 3 April 2002 that injured three people. He was sentenced to death on charges of terror and incitement of separatism a few months later. His death sentence was commuted to life in prison in 2005, and later to 20 years’ imprisonment. He continued to maintain his innocence.

He was being held in a prison in Dazhu county in Sichuan province, which borders Tibet. Students for a Free Tibet said his family had not been told how he died. Last year they applied for medical parole for him on the grounds that he suffered from a heart condition, high blood pressure, dizzy spells and problems with his legs that had caused him to fall on a number of occasions.


He was an innocent monk who suffered over 13 years of unjust imprisonment, torture and abuse in a Chinese prisonGeshe Nyima, cousin

He was born in 1950 in a Tibetan area of Sichuan and stayed in India from 1982 to 1987 to study under the Dalai Lama. During that time, the Dalai Lama recognized Tenzin Delek as a tulku, or a reincarnated lama. In 1987 he returned to China, where he worked to establish monasteries, clinics, schools and orphanages.

Human rights groups have said his relationship with Chinese officials took a turn for the worse when he opposed attempts to clear forests and because of his support for the Dalai Lama, who is considered a separatist by the government.

His family called for officials to release his body. “Tenzin Delek Rinpoche was an innocent monk who suffered over 13 years of unjust imprisonment, torture and abuse in a Chinese prison for simply advocating for the rights and wellbeing of his people and for expressing his devotion to His Holiness the Dalai Lama,” said his cousin Geshe Nyima. “The Chinese government must immediately release his body so that our family and community may perform the last Buddhist religious rites.”

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