A Tibetan serving a 21 years jail term under Chinese authorities has died of prison injuries. According to the information released by a human rights organisation, the victim has died of serious physical injuries that led to his death at a local hospital. For the worse, the family members of the deceased had no knowledge of his whereabouts, let alone of his arrest and sentence.
Kunchok Jinpa, 51 died at a hospital in Lhasa earlier this month, after around three months since being transfered from prison. According to the local source of Human Rights Watch, the deceased had suffered brain haemorrhage and was paralysed. He had been secretly detained in 2013 and later sentenced to 21 years of imprisonment on charges of reporting protests in his region.
There had been no news of Kunchok Jinpa’s whereabouts since his detention in 2013. New information indicates that the authorities detained Kunchok Jinpa on November 8, 2013, providing his family no information on his whereabouts, and later convicted him of leaking state secrets for passing information to foreign media about local environmental and other protests in his region, according to the HRW report.
His 21-year sentence is unparalleled for such an offense, and no information about his trial or conviction had been publicly available outside China until now, the report added while HRW China Director Sophie Richardson slammed the Chinese government for arbitrary detention, torture or ill-treatment, and the death of people in their custody.
“Kunchok Jinpa’s death is yet another grim case of a wrongfully imprisoned Tibetan dying from mistreatment. The Chinese authorities responsible for arbitrary detention, torture or ill-treatment, and the death of people in their custody should be held accountable.” the report quoted Sophie Richardson.
He is believed to have provided information via social media or directly to Tibetan media outside China about a protest in May 2013 against planned mining on a sacred mountain, Naklha Dzamba, together with the names of those detained for involvement in the protest.
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