Tibetan activist Tenzin Delek Rinpoche’s niece escaped from Chinese occupation and reached the head quarters of Tibetan exile, Dharamshala, India on last Sunday and in her press conference yesterday that her family believes that her uncle died of torture in the prison.
Nyima, 26 and a mother to a 6 year old daughter told that she has made the difficult decision to flee from Tibet leaving behind her daughter and her ageing mother to tell world about her uncle and continue the fight for his justice.
Speaking to the press conference, she said that her uncle told her mother during prison visits that he was severely beaten, starved and asked to demonstrate his religious powers by the Chinese police officials.
“We don’t trust what China is telling us and demand a thorough investigation into his death,” she said.
Nyima Lhamo has been able to flee from the Chinese occupation and reach to safety in India for exile after about a year of Rinpoche’s sudden death in the prison where he was held. She had to pay around $9700 to the smugglers to escape from the Chinese occupation and reach India via Nepal.
On 2 July 2015, family members were suddenly invited to visit him, but on arrival in Chengdu they were repeatedly denied access to the prison. On 12 July, they were informed by authorities that he had died and the authorities claimed that his cause death was a heart attack.
Nyima and her mother were only given a few moments with the Rinpoche’s body after she tried to hang herself with a scarf tied on the prison bar. But other monks in prison, who had dressed his body in monks’ robes and laid it on a platform, told them that his nails were black and he had a deep hollow behind his head. Nyima said her uncle’s lips had also turned black.
Nyima Lhamo and her mother Dolkar were also detained for about two weeks following the incident.
The family members of Tenzin Delek was neither given any medical reports of the death nor did they release his body to perform the last rites to the least and this preventing any inquiry to the cause of death.
Chinese authorities had accused the Rinpoche in a bomb explosion in Sichuan in 2002 and despite absence of any evidences, they sentenced him to a 20 year imprisonment while the alleged accomplice Lobsang Dhundup was executed in 2003 without any evidence either.
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