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Fifth Tibetan sentenced to death by Chinese court
Grave concerns that unsound evidence presented against Tibetans in trials closedto independent observers
A Chinese court has sentenced a Tibetan to death with a two year reprieve after finding himguilty of starting a fire in a clothes shop in Lhasa on March 14 last year which led to the deathof the shop owner, according to the official Xinhua news agency in an online article today.Xinhua cited an article today in the official Tibet Daily newspaper which named the Tibetan asPenkyi of Sagya county (1). The same article stated that two other Tibetans had received lengthy sentences for theirinvolvement in helping Penkyi to start a fire in a second shop which led to the deaths of fiveshop employees, according to Xinhua: Penkyi of Nyinmo county and Chime were sentenced tolife imprisonment and ten years respectively. The Xinhua article implied that the Tibetan, Penkyi, who was sentenced to death is male butphotos which appeared on the website of the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracyindicated that all three that were sentenced are female.Xinhua did not give a date for the sentences which were passed by the Lhasa IntermediatePeople’s Court. In separate cases the same court on April 8 sentenced a further two Tibetansto death and another two Tibetans to death, each with a two year reprieve (2). The trials and sentences relate to incidents in Lhasa last year which quickly developed intowidespread protests which swept across the Tibetan Plateau, demonstrating Tibetans’emphatic rejection of Chinese policies and repression in Tibet over decades. Last year’sprotests were overwhelmingly peaceful but there were individual cases of violence againstChinese-owned businesses in Lhasa, including arson cases, which should be investigated andprosecuted in accordance with international judicial standards.Free Tibet does not believe that the trials and sentences announced by Xinhua today, nor thoseannounced on April 8, came close to being prosecuted in accordance with international judicialstandards. Information regarding these cases is available only from the Chinese government-controlled news sources and access to Tibet has been severely restricted since last year’sprotests, making it impossible for the details of these cases, and others, to be independentlyverified. Free Tibet is especially concerned that evidence presented in the prosecution of thesearson cases is likely to be unsound: in reporting on April 8 the two year reprieve on one of the Tibetans sentenced to death, Tenzin Phuntsog, Xinhua stated that the judges had taken intoaccount his
“ positive attitude in admitting his crime after he was arrested”.
But last Novemberthe UN Committee Against Torture stated its concern “…of routine and widespread use of torture… especially to extract confessions or information to be used in criminal proceedings”and “Continued reliance on confessions as a common form of evidence for prosecution…” (3)Concerns regarding the lack of due process in recent sentencing go beyond the routine use of torture as a means of collecting evidence. Free Tibet has documented a series of cases in which Tibetans have not been afforded the legal safeguards provided for in the constitution of thePeople’s Republic of China, Chinese Criminal Procedure Law or in customary international law,including access to legal counsel. For example in October 2008, Free Tibet reported lengthysentences passed on eight monks from the Tibetan town of Kyabe for alleged bombingoffences. According to reliable information received by Free Tibet, the monks were denied allaccess to legal counsel from the time of arrest to sentencing. The trial of the monks wasconducted
in camera
according to the source and the nature of the charges and eventualsentencing of the monks were not made public by the court. The court only acknowledged thesentences passed on the Kyabe monks after it was contacted by the Associated Press. 
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