II. The Politics of Sentencing: Online Offenses

Criminal Charges Against the Tengdro Monks

The Chinese government’s criminal case against the Tengdro monks is exceptional in two respects: the available information indicates that the monks were involved in only minor, if any, offenses under Chinese law, and the long sentences they received for such offenses were unprecedented in their severity. These sentences almost certainly violated Chinese law regarding the permitted degree of punishment for criminal offenses.

The various descriptions received by Human Rights Watch suggest that the Tengdro monks were detained for one or more of three activities: for online communications with Tibetans abroad, for possession of photographs or literature relating to the Dalai Lama, and for sending funds abroad.

As explained below, under Chinese law, online communications are illegal only if they threaten social stability or national security in some way, such as by spreading unauthorized information, defrauding citizens, exposing state secrets, or inciting separatism. No evidence has emerged that suggests that the messages exchanged by the Tengdro monks met such standards or infringed any Chinese laws.

The monks were also found, in some cases, to have texts or images relating to the exile Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama. In Chinese jurisprudence, however, mere possession of materials relating to the Dalai Lama is not in itself a serious offense and may not be technically illegal unless it involves a compounding offense such as distribution of illicit materials or incitement of separatism. In 2005, a Tibetan named Sonam Gyalpo in Lhasa was sentenced to 12 years in prison for possession of photos of the Dalai Lama and related literature,[27] but he had been convicted on previous occasions for offenses of a similar nature and so would have been considered a recidivist.[28]

A more typical case involved 13 or more Tibetan villagers in the neighboring county of Nyalam in 2017. The villagers were Communist Party members and so were not allowed to be religious believers. However, they had hidden “prohibited items involving political problems”—probably photographs of the Dalai Lama—in a cave where they would go secretly to pray, according to an official media report.[29] However, after the police raided the cave, none of the participants were charged with a crime. Instead, three were expelled from the Party while the others were given warnings. This reinforces the view that possession of texts by or relating to the Dalai Lama is not in itself a crime, even when the case involves Party members and officials. In the Tengdro case, as we have seen, at least two detainees—Tenzin Yeshe and Tsewang Lhamo—were released without charges after a few days, even though they apparently had images of the Dalai Lama and other unapproved items on their phones. In strictly legal terms, therefore, the charges against the Tengdro monks cannot be explained by the mere possession of photographs of the Dalai Lama.

Police interrogation of the Tengdro detainees, lastly, reportedly focused on donations to members of the community’s sister monastery in Nepal, founded by Sengdrak Rinpoche, following the 2015 earthquake. Certain foreign transfers of funds are illegal in China and specifically in Tibet. In particular, the Public Security Bureau issued a notice in the TAR in February 2018 that listed the collection of funds or donations as an example of “violations or crimes by underworld forces.” But the notice specified that such transfers were only criminal acts if they involved “compulsory collection” by the organizers, “unjust enrichment,” or donations to the “Dalai clique,” a term used for the exile Tibetan administration in India and associated political activists.[30]

None of these factors appear to have been involved in the Tengdro case. Neither Sengdrak Rinpoche nor his community in Nepal were part of the exile administration, nor were they involved in any known political activities. In religious terms they, like the Tengdro monks, belong to a Tibetan Buddhist school that is distinct from that of the Dalai Lama, and which in the past has not been a focus of police attention in Tibet. Sengdrak Rinpoche had not been to Tibet again after his 1993 visit, but this was because of a general Chinese government policy restricting visits to Tibet by exile Tibetan lamas since around that time and does not indicate that the police had any particular suspicions regarding him. Incoming donations received by the Tengdro monks from their sister community in Nepal do not appear to have been seen as a problem by the police: the available reports indicate that police questioning focused on outgoing donations by the Tengdro monks. For the Tengdro monks to communicate with or send financial aid to their sister-community in Nepal was therefore not illegal under Chinese law, does not seem to have been a previous issue of police concern, and should not normally have led to detention, still less to prosecution.

Chinese law also forbids religious institutions from receiving unauthorized donations from “foreign organizations or individuals,” but only if those donations are not for “activities that are commensurate with the purpose of the religious group or the religious activities site,” if they have conditions attached, or if the amount donated exceeds 100,000 yuan (about US$15,500).[31] Although Tengdro received some support funds for reconstruction of the monastery from its sister community in Nepal, there is no indication that these donations contravened regulations.

Human Rights Watch found no other evidence of possible offenses committed by the monks—for example, as noted above, both their reconstruction of the monastery in 2017 and their erection of a large outdoor statue had received approval from local authorities, as well as their donations to their sister monastery in Nepal, did not involve any use of coercion in collecting the funds.

Chinese authorities have detained and punished Tibetans in the past for actions that are technically legal, such as having images of the Dalai Lama or sending religious donations abroad. However, those cases usually involved accusations of additional illegal acts of a more serious nature and did not on their own lead to heavy sentences. In the Tengdro case, the available evidence suggests that the Tengdro monks had not committed any illegal acts or at most had been involved in only minor infractions of Chinese laws and regulations, for which the sentences, if any, would normally have been minimal.

Other Cases of Extreme Punishment in Tibet

The sentences handed down to Choegyal Wangpo, Lobsang Jinpa, and Norbu Dondrub were extraordinarily severe. Human Rights Watch does not know of any Tibetan, since 2013, sentenced to 20 years or more for a non-violent action not involving any form of protest. Below, we list previous cases in which the courts imposed extreme sentences on Tibetans for non-violent offenses. This survey shows that the sentences given to the Tengdro monks were exceptional, if not unique, and almost certainly violated Chinese law governing sentencing decisions.

Between 1999 and 2013, extreme sentences—20 years and over—were imposed on at least 10 Tibetans for non-violent acts of expression, association, or opinion. Seven of those Tibetans had not been accused of participation in a protest:

• Bangri Choktrul Rinpoche (Jigme Tenzin Nyima), the head of an orphanage in Lhasa, was arrested in August 1999 and given a life sentence (later commuted to 19 years plus 2 years for time previously served, apparently for receiving funds from exile for the orphanage[32];
• Choeying Khedrup, a monk from Tsanden monastery in Sog (Ch.: Suo) county, Nagchu, was sentenced to life in prison on January 29, 2001, for printing and distributing pro-independence leaflets[33];
• Jampel Wangchuk, a senior monk at Drepung monastery in Lhasa, was sentenced to life in prison in 2010, apparently for failing to prevent a protest by monks[34];
• Konchok Nyima, another senior monk from Drepung monastery in Lhasa, was sentenced to 20 years in 2010, apparently for failing to prevent a protest by monks[35];
• Wangdu, a community worker in Lhasa, was sentenced in 2008 to life imprisonment, apparently for distributing information he had received from exiles abroad[36];
• Dorje Tashi, a prominent entrepreneur and hotel owner in Lhasa was sentenced to life imprisonment on June 26, 2010, for having sent donations to the Dalai Lama, although he was only charged with embezzlement, based on evidence that appears to have been largely fabricated[37]; and
• the late Konchok Jinpa,[38] a tour guide from Nagchu, was reportedly given a 21-year sentence in 2013, for distributing information to foreign media and others about Tibetans detained in local protests.
   

Three other cases of extreme sentencing for non-violent actions involved participation in a protest: Pasang (from Lhasa) and Tsultrim Gyatso (from Labrang in Ganlho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in Gansu province) received life sentences for involvement in protests in 2008 that appear to have been non-violent, as did Sonam Lhundrup (from Dranggo in Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in Sichuan province) following a protest in 2012.

Other Tibetans who received long sentences for involvement in non-violent protests include Thardoe Gyaltsen, a senior monk from Driru (Ch.: Biru) in Nagchu, who received an 18-year sentence in 2014, for peaceful opposition to the crackdown there,[39] and Lodro Gyatso from Sog in Nagchu, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2018, for involvement in a peaceful protest.[40] Lobsang Konchok, a Tibetan from Ngaba in Sichuan province, was given a death sentence in 2013, for alleged encouragement of self-immolation protests in which only the participants were harmed.[41] At least 20 other Tibetans are known to have received sentences of 10 to 15 years for non-violent offenses since 2013.[42]

All of these convictions would appear to violate substantive rights, such as freedom of expression, opinion, and religion or belief, as recognized under international human rights law, or resulted in sentences that were wholly disproportionate to the offense. However, they could be considered crimes under Chinese law, according to which they are usually classified as actions that “endanger state security” or as “incitement to split the country.” The Chinese Criminal Code allows a court to impose sentences of five years or more for such offenses, but only if the defendant is “a ringleader or the one whose crime is grave” (Criminal Code, articles 102 to 106). These punishments are typically invoked only when a defendant is accused of involvement in the organization or establishment of an illegal group, “collusion” with a foreign force, espionage, leading or planning a protest, an act of violence, or recidivism.

From the perspective of Chinese officials, these conditions could be said to have applied in the cases of extreme sentencing listed above, all dating from 2013 or earlier. But in the case of the Tengdro monks, there is no indication of any protest or plan for a protest, any connection with or creation of an illegal organization, any espionage, act of violence, or attempt to spread unauthorized information widely, or previous conviction. And it does not seem that the sentences imposed on the Tengdro monks could have been intended to serve as deterrents, since the trial was secret and the case has never been disclosed to the public. The decision to prosecute the Tengdro monks and the severity of the sentences imposed on them appears instead to have been the result of political calculations by TAR officials. We discuss the evidence for this below (See section: “Behind the Sentences”).

Online Offenses: Regulations up to 2019

An important consideration in the case of the Tengdro monks appears to have been the desire of officials to show their commitment to the ongoing drive in the TAR, as across the country, to increase control over individuals’ use of the internet, including social media.

This section describes recent laws that increasingly proscribe certain forms of online communication and identifies cases in which Tibetans have been accused of breaking these laws, along with the sentences imposed on them, where known. This overview shows increasing attention by authorities to restricting peaceful online expression, but it also shows that the treatment of the Tengdro monks was exceptionally severe compared with other cases in which Tibetans have been convicted of online offenses.

By 2001, China had already introduced more than 60 sets of regulations governing the use of the internet, and numerous other regulations have been issued since then.[43] In June 2017, the Chinese government passed the Cybersecurity Law, leading to a number of nationwide campaigns to “clean up” the online environment, including one initiated in January 2019 to rid the internet and social media of “12 types of negative and harmful information including bad lifestyles and bad pop culture,” such as rumors, pornography, and parody.[44]

More recent regulations have identified specific forms of forbidden political speech, notably the Provisions on the Governance of the Online Information Content Ecosystem (the “Provisions”), passed in December 2019. [45] The Provisions criminalized any information posted on the internet “opposing the basic principles set forth in the Constitution,” “destroying national unity,” “denying the deeds and spirit of heroes and martyrs,” “undermining ethnic unity,” or “undermining the nation's policy on religions.”

In January 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced regulations banning members of the public from writing any online article, blog, or commentary on issues relating to health, politics, economics, education, the military, or certain other topics unless they have received official certification.[46] The authorities shut down 18,489 illegal websites in 2020, referred 7,550 cases for prosecution by the courts, and arranged for website operators to close 158,000 illegal accounts.[47]

In addition to these national developments, local administrations at provincial, prefectural, and sometimes county level have issued their own regulations to reinforce the new restrictions and controls. Regulations issued in Tibetan-populated areas have emphasized issues relating to ethnic relations, separatism, and contact with people or groups abroad.

In October 2017, the Public Security Bureau (PSB) in Machu (Ch: Maqu) county, Kanlho (Ch: Gannan), a Tibetan autonomous prefecture in Gansu province, issued rules “for strictly preventing the spread of ‘illegal’ contents on the internet” including, as its first item, “information containing political contents.”[48] Other administrations in Tibetan-populated areas followed suit: in March 2019, the prefectural government in Kanlho warned that people should “not spread rumors or believe in rumors,” indicating that the former could be considered a crime. The statement added that “if any WeChat group member publishes any illegal information against the laws, he or she will be sentenced to [between] one and eight years in prison.”[49] In August 2019, authorities in Qinghai province, where most of the territory is populated by Tibetans, also warned of prison sentences of up to eight years for posting and sharing “illegal” information that “harms the nation and the Chinese Communist Party.”[50]

The TAR authorities were equally energetic in setting up laws, regulations, and official entities to manage public use of the internet including social media. As TAR Party Secretary Wu Yingjie put it during a November 2016 inspection of the TAR Internet Affairs Office—an agency directly under the Party in Tibet rather than the government—“by carrying through the correct political approach, managing and using the internet properly, [we must] make the Party's voice the loudest voice on the internet.”[51] The TAR authorities accordingly launched a campaign in September 2018 to “rectify illegal crimes in the network communication field,”[52] and issued their own provincial-level regulations in February 2019 to tighten control of online content.

Known as “the ‘Twenty Prohibitions’ on Network Communication Activities” in the TAR, these banned any online content involving “activities to subvert the country, undermine national unity, and overthrow the socialist system” or any use of “network communication tools to fabricate and disseminate information such as provoking ethnic relations, [and] creating ethnic contradictions.”[53] The “Twenty Prohibitions” focused particularly on communications abroad, banning online users who “provide information to domestic and foreign organizations, institutions, or individuals” that “has not been [previously] disclosed by the state” (article 4) or who “collect, produce, download, store, publish, and disseminate information that subverts the country, undermines national unity, and overthrows the socialist system” (article 5). According to one unconfirmed exile report, at the same time the document was issued in February 2019, the TAR authorities were offering rewards of up to 300,000 yuan (about $45,000) for reports by members of the public on illegal online activities.[54]  

A mid-level official told Human Rights Watch in 2019 that sub-police stations in every locality already had units by that time that operated under the direction of the TAR Public Security Bureau’s Internet Management Department and managed WeChat and internet communications in their area. Human Rights Watch wrote to WeChat requesting information regarding the TAR PSB’s Internet Management Bureau and its use of its platform (See Appendix). At the time of writing, Human Rights Watch had not received a response from WeChat.

These national, provincial, and local laws and regulations restricting online communications were issued in the wake of a series of security-related laws that were passed in China from 2014 onwards. These included laws on counter-espionage (2014), national security (2015), and national intelligence (2017), all of which broadened the definitions of espionage and other illegal activities. These laws increased the focus on security issues, in particular in relation to ethnic minorities. The Detailed Implementation Rules for the Counter-espionage Law (2017), for example, widened the definition of espionage to include any acts “carrying out division of the country,” “undermining national unity,” or “inciting ethnic divides” (article 8). It specifically banned the transmission of any texts or audiovisual materials with such purposes, adding to the already intensive surveillance of communications by Tibetans, Uyghurs, and other minorities in China.

Arbitrary Detention for Online Offenses

From 2008 through 2020, the authorities have detained at least 97 Tibetans for online activities or communications that were deemed illegal, according to a database of political prisoners maintained by the US-based Congressional Executive Commission on China. The Executive Commission draws its data primarily from foreign and exile media reports. A further 20 cases have been reported since January 2021.

In most cases, the punishment given to detainees in these cases is not known, or, in some instances, involved only a few days or weeks in detention. For example, in October 2013, a Tibetan woman named Kalsang from Driru in Nagchu was detained for allegedly expressing “anti-China” sentiments on her WeChat account and for having stored “banned pictures of the exile Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama” in her cell phone.[55] The following year, Lobsang Choejor, a monk of Drongsar Monastery in Chamdo (Ch.: Changdu), was detained for an unknown period for sending out information to “outside contacts” through WeChat and distributing teachings and talks by the Dalai Lama, but is not known to have been sentenced.[56]

In 2019 more such cases were reported:

• Wangchuk, a Tibetan man from Nyalam county (next to Tingri county), was detained, probably for sharing some books by or about the Dalai Lama on WeChat;[57]
• Rinso, a Tibetan from Dzorge (Ch.: Ruo’ergai) in Sichuan province, was detained for 10 days for sharing a photo of the Dalai Lama on WeChat;[58]
• A Tibetan monk named Sonam Palden, 22, from Kirti Monastery in Ngaba (Ch.: Aba) county, was held in connection with his WeChat posts about the Tibetan language and Chinese policy;[59]
• Three Tibetans in Kanlho prefecture of Gansu province were detained for communicating on social media with friends and family outside Tibet;[60]and
• Two Tibetans in Tingri county were detained for the same offense. One was held at the county detention center for over a month and the other was held there for 20 days. Police reportedly subjected them to beatings and interrogation.[61]

Human Rights Watch wrote to WeChat requesting information on its data sharing practices with the TAR Public Security Bureau authorities and on its position regarding Chinese authorities’ surveillance of its platform (See Appendix). At the time of writing, Human Rights Watch had not received a response from WeChat.

These instances appear to have involved brief, deterrent punishment for online offenses.

Similar cases were reported in March 2020, when the Chinese authorities arrested 10 people in Lhasa for spreading “rumors” about a coronavirus outbreak on March 1, and shut down 75 WeChat groups in the TAR.[62] In the first weeks of 2020, police in Qinghai province investigated 72 people for spreading rumors online, according to the New York Times.[63] Those cases are not known to have resulted in trials or prison sentences.

Long Sentences for Online Offenses

In 19 of the 117 known cases involving Tibetans accused of online offenses, detainees were tried and given sentences averaging 4.5 years each, according to our analysis of existing reports. These cases appear to have been treated with exceptional severity because officials alleged that the online messages in these cases were connected to activities—such as organizing a protest, forming a non-approved organization, sending security-related intelligence to foreign or exile organizations, and spreading non-approved information widely within the domestic community—that officials deemed threats to social stability or national security.

Such cases included those of Atruk (Adrag) Lopoe,[64] Jamyang Kunkhyen,[65] and Lothok, who were sentenced in 2007 to 10, nine, and three years, respectively, for sending photographs abroad showing a protest in Lithang (Ch.: Litang), a Tibetan area within Sichuan province.[66]

Online messages relating to self-immolation protests led to particularly severe sentences after a ruling was issued by China’s Supreme Court and its top prosecution body, in December 2012, classifying any encouragement of self-immolation as liable to the charge of “intentional homicide.”[67] These led to a series of long sentences:

• In 2013, Lobsang (Lorang) Konchok was given a suspended death sentence for intentional homicide after posting news of self-immolations as well as allegedly inciting the suicide protests;
• In the same case, his nephew, Lobsang Tsering, was sentenced to 10 years, also for inciting suicide protests;^[68]
• In March 2013, a court in Tsoshar (Ch.: Haidong) prefecture, Qinghai province, gave three Tibetans—Gyurmey (or Jigme) Thabke, Kalsang Dondrub, and Lobsang—sentences of up to six years for “using others’ self-immolation incidents to disseminate text and images relating to Tibetan independence;”[69]
• In July 2013, a monk from Zilkar Monastery in Tridu (Ch.: Chenduo) county, Qinghai province, Tsultrim Kalsang, received a 10-year sentence for providing information to foreign media about a double self-immolation;[70]
• Also in 2013, a court in Malho (Ch.: Huangnan) prefecture, Qinghai province sentenced two Tibetans, Choepa Gyal and Namkha Jam, to six years each for sending information and images about protests or dissent abroad; and
• In the same case, a Tibetan named Chagthar, was sentenced to four years for editing and distributing images and text about self-immolations.[71]

In some cases, possession of information about a self-immolation alone (without evidence the person had shared it with anyone else) was enough for a prison sentence, as in the case of a 20-year-old thangka painter, Ngawang Tobden, who received a two-year sentence in Lhasa in February 2013 for photographs of self-immolations and of the Tibetan flag found on his phone.[72]

Lengthy prison sentences have also been reported in the cases of Tibetans convicted of sending messages relating to environmental issues. In 2014, Jamyang Wangtso and Namgyal Wangchuk from Riwoche (Ch.: Leiwuqi) county, Chamdo municipality, TAR, received seven- and five-year sentences, respectively, after they shared an image on WeChat of two Tibetans wearing robes trimmed with animal fur as part of an effort to combat the wearing of fur.[73]  In December 2019, a group of nine Tibetans from Gabde (Ch.: Gande) in Golok (Ch.: Guoluo) prefecture, Qinghai province, including environmental campaigner Anya Sengdra, received sentences of up to seven years in prison after they created two WeChat groups about local corruption and environmental protection,[74] which led them to hold peaceful protests against local officials.[75]  

Enforcement of Online Restrictions since Mid-2020

Since mid-2020, exile media have reported that controls over online communications have become stricter throughout Tibet.[76] These claims were substantiated in July 2020, when two Tibetan musicians, Khandro Tseten and Tsogo, from Tsekhog (Ch.: Zeku) in Qinghai province, were sentenced to up to seven years for sharing a song on social media that praised the Dalai Lama.[77]

The intensification of restrictions on online activities was made clear in November 2020, when the TAR authorities published a document called “Notice of the Tibet Autonomous Region on not using information networks to implement activities to split the country and undermine national unity.”[78] The notice announced additional details of restrictions on online content, focusing entirely on expressions of political opinion or organization. This confirmed that the main focus of online control in the TAR is political speech, especially discussions of Tibet’s historic status and any criticism of China’s policies in Tibet, rather than an attempt to crack down on rumors, pornography, or extortion, which are often the focus of online “cleansing” drives in other parts of China.

The 2020 TAR notice banned any online activities that relate to undermining “nationality unity” and specifically outlawed any online information that “distorts history, downplays national consciousness, uses religious content, religious activities, etc. to attack the party and state policies, or slander the socialist system.” It also prohibited any postings that “distort facts, spread rumors or spread false information to provoke ethnic relations and undermine ethnic unity.” The notice also criminalized any technical assistance enabling people to view foreign websites that “undermine national unity.”[79]

Initial reports indicate that enforcement of the new regulations has been stepped up since late 2020, both within the TAR and in adjoining Tibetan areas. In some cases, those accused of violations have received short prison sentences, fines, or periods of detention:

• In August 2020, the Tsholho (Ch.: Hainan) People's Intermediate Court in Qinghai sentenced Tibetan student Jampa Tsering to 1.5 years in prison for “inciting splittism” after he posted an image of an “illegal football team flag and logo”— possibly a reference to the forbidden Tibetan national flag – in a message relating to a football competition in Serchen county;[80]
• On October 13, 2020, a court in Golog (Ch.: Guoluo) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai province sentenced Tashi Gyal (Ch.: Zhaxijia), a 50-year-old Tibetan herder from Ragya in Machen county, Golog, to one year in prison for “inciting separatism.” Tashi Gyal had downloaded four images and a video of the Dalai Lama from the internet in 2014, and had forwarded these items to a group of friends on his WeChat (Ch.: Weixin) channel on three occasions that year. On three days in 2015, he had sent these friends a photograph of the forbidden Tibetan flag and three videos with messages from exile leaders. At the time of the hearing, he had already been in custody for five months;[81]
• In December 2020, a Tibetan named Lhundrup Dorje from Machen (Ch.: Maqin) in Golok prefecture, Qinghai province, received a one-year prison sentence on the charge of “inciting separatism” after posting pictures and religious teachings of the Dalai Lama on his Weibo and WeChat accounts that included a graphic with the slogan “Tibetan independence;”[82]
• On January 2, 2021, 18 Tibetans were summoned to the police office in Tsona (Ch.: Cuona) county, Lhokha municipality, TAR, and detained on suspicion of using online communications to harm national security, according to the exile media outlet Tibet Times.[83] The defendants had brought their phones to an official meeting the previous day, which apparently led to police seizing and searching the phones. It is not clear why the messages sent by the defendants had been considered damaging to national security, or what kind of messages they were, but the messages may have contained news about the official meeting. Some of the detainees appear to have been fined and then released, but three had to be hospitalized after being severely beaten during the detention period, according to the report, which did not give names of those involved;
• On January 6, 2021, two Tibetans, Kakho and Namyak, from Chumarleb (Ch.: Qumalai) county in Yushu prefecture, Qinghai province, were detained on charges of posting news in a WeChat group about political developments in the exile community, which was then holding elections for a new leader.[84] Nothing more is known of their situation; and
• On February 17, 2021, police in Trindu (Ch.: Chenduo) county, Jyekundo (Ch.: Yushu) in Qinghai province detained three Tibetans, according to the Tibet Times.[85] The detainees—identified as Kensri, Dramdul, and a female student named Sanggye Tso enrolled at a high school in Guangdong—had been running an online group called Dzari Karmo, named after a sacred mountain in the area. The group had about 240 members in different Tibetan areas but may not have obtained official permission to operate, according to the paper. According to a foreign advocacy group, Dramdul was severely beaten, leading to fractures in both legs, while in custody.[86]

Details of cases involving alleged online offenses in Tibetan areas are scarce and often unconfirmed, but they indicate that police detain and in more serious cases prosecute people in Tibetan areas where there is suspicion either of some potential threat to national security or social stability, or where there has been a breach of administrative regulations, such as a failure to obtain permission to form an online group.

III. Behind the Sentences: Preventive Control

While a definitive analysis is not possible because of restrictions on research, Human Rights Watch is of the view that the Tengdro case, including the extremely severe sentences, is in large part a reflection of internal bureaucratic pressures on cadres to comply with political requirements issued by their superiors—what is known as the “upwardly accountable system of governance” in China. In particular, these pressures are compounded by the increasing role in security operations in China, particularly in minority areas, of the policy of “preventive security,” also known as “preventive control,” or “pre-emptive policing”—the principle of eliminating potential security threats before they have actually taken place.

Pre-emptive policing took its current form in the early 2000s as part of a China-wide security policy known as “stability maintenance” (weiwen). That policy required officials to implement “preventive control of social stability” (shehui zhi’an fangkong) by establishing security systems that would detect threats before they emerge. In Tibet, particular emphasis has been placed from 2011 onwards on “three-dimensional preventive control” (litihua shehui zhi’an fangkong tixi), referring primarily to forms of digital surveillance, and on “eliminating unseen threats”(xiaochu yinhuan), which refers to treating minor issues or complaints as forms of serious unrest that have not yet shown their full colors.[87] In this policy climate, cadres benefit if seen by superiors as having identified security threats before they become visible and as having punished those responsible.  

The effects of the principle of preventive control are currently most visible in Xinjiang, where this approach has underpinned a practice of arbitrary detention on a massive scale.[88] As Zhang Zhisheng, a leading spokesman for the government in Xinjiang, told a BBC reporter in June 2019, “Some people, before they commit murder, already show they’re capable of killing. Should we wait for them to commit the crime? Or should we prevent it from happening?”[89] The Tengdro case took place at a time when pre-emptive policing was becoming increasingly prominent in Tibet, and can be understood as a prime example of the practice there. And due to specificities of the case—particularly the involvement of monks, the location of the monastery near the border in an area that had been a principal route for Tibetans fleeing China, the earlier history of political resistance in that area, and the fact that the case was initiated by higher-level authorities in Lhasa rather than locally—the effects of pre-emptive policing were amplified.

In our view, the severity of the sentences thus likely reflects a “perfect storm” because it brought together officials from a number of agencies within China’s bureaucracy at a time when preventive control was the guiding principle for security work. This would have led, among other things, to multiple officials all seeking to prove their diligence and avoid punishment for failing to detect the case in advance.

Such anxiety on the part of officials is due partly to the fact that, in Tibet particularly, security is not an issue limited to officials in public security or national security departments: all cadres at every level and in every agency have the responsibility to identify and counter threats to national security and social stability. In addition, the Tengdro case involved overlapping areas of policy and administration—not just the management of online communications, but also the management of monasteries, transnational funding flows, border security, and other issues. Officials from numerous departments would thus have been involved in the case, including, among others, the Public Security Bureau, the State Security Bureau, the United Front Work Department, the Religious Affairs Bureau, the TAR Internet Affairs Office, and the Internet Management Department within the Public Security Bureau. The various Party Committees charged with oversight of these agencies at the four levels of administration—township, county, prefecture, and region—would have faced particular scrutiny, not to mention the village-resident and monastery-resident cadre teams stationed in Dranak and in Tengdro monastery. Officials in all these agencies were obliged to identify security threats in advance, and would have come under pressure to explain why they had not done so in the Tengdro case.

As noted above, an important consideration here is that the action against the monks and the night raid on the village was initiated by police from Lhasa, not by local authorities. Once the Lhasa police launched a full-scale raid on the village, based on messages found by chance on Choegyal Wangpo’s phone, local police in Tingri and officials with responsibility for temple management in Tengdro and related issues would have been powerless to stop the higher-level agencies from pursuing the investigation. Instead, they would have been tempted to act aggressively against the monks in order to protect themselves from being accused by the Lhasa authorities of a major failure in their work.

Conversely, cadres in all the agencies involved in the case stood to gain if they could claim to have discovered a security threat in a monastery. They would have been especially well rewarded by their superiors if that threat was a potential one rather than an actual one, because they were required to demonstrate success in carrying out “preventive control.” In the Tengdro case, the promotion of Hu Jicheng, the county-level official responsible for security and religious management at Tengdro, shortly after the Tengdro monks were detained, may have been an indication of such a reward or at least the avoidance of punishment; he and others might have protected themselves by exaggerating the evidence against the monks.[90]

Not all officials in Tingri were so fortunate: on March 31, 2021, the Tibet Daily announced that a Tibetan official called Buchung Tsering, the head of the Tingri county branch of the United Front—the Party agency that is ultimately in charge of religious and nationality policies—was being investigated for “grave breakages of discipline and law,”[91] a serious offense that could easily lead to criminal prosecution. So far, no evidence has emerged connecting the investigation of Buchung Tsering to the Tengdro case, but he would certainly have had a leading role in that case, and announcements of investigations of this kind are rare in Tibet, especially where United Front officials are concerned.

In the analysis below, we show that agencies covering a number of security-related issues, such as the management of religion, the monitoring of online communications and funding transfers, and security in border areas all had responsibilities that were put in question by the case of the Tengdro monks, and suggest that this may have contributed to the hyper-criminalization and extreme sentencing in that case.

Management of Religion

Chinese authorities have steadily sought to increase restrictions and controls over monasteries throughout Tibet since at least 1996, when all monks and nuns in the TAR were required to attend three-month-long patriotic education sessions, to place patriotism before religious belief, to denounce the Dalai Lama, and to enroll in monasteries only in their home area and only if an existing monk or nun had moved, disrobed, or died.[92] Additional regulations in the TAR banned the construction of new monasteries, set a fixed quota on the number of monks and nuns in each monastery, restricted any travel or residence by monastics beyond their county, and banned them from conducting unauthorized rituals in private homes.[93]

As previously noted, government control over monasteries in the TAR intensified dramatically in 2011, when permanent monastery-resident cadre teams were installed at each monastery in the TAR at township-level or above.[94] Under a policy known as the Six Ones, each cadre stationed in a monastery was required to maintain a file on each monk or nun, and to “befriend” them and their families.[95] By 2012, the existing “management committees” running each monastery, which had consisted of monks from that monastery, had been downgraded and placed under the authority of new “temple management committees” staffed principally by lay officials and overseen by the new cadre teams.[96] Each monastery has since been required to display a national flag and a portrait of China’s leaders, and to have a library containing official newspapers and a television in order to give monks access to state media.[97]

In December 2017, a policy known as the “Four Standards” was introduced in Tibet requiring all monastics to prove, besides their religious knowledge, their “political reliability,” their ability to impress or “educate” the public, and their willingness to “play an active role at critical moments,” meaning the immediate quashing of any signs of political dissent.[98] Revisions to national religious affairs regulations passed in 2017 further strengthened state controls over the practice of religion, singling out “foreign forces” and “foreign influence” in religious institutions as a security threat,[99] in line with current policies that require the “sinicization” of all religions in China.

Village-level monasteries, like Tengdro, are not usually required to have a cadre team in permanent residence at the monastery. Instead, from 2011 onwards, village-level monasteries were placed under the management of “temple management committees” formed by members of the “two committees”—the village committee and the village Party committee—together with appointees from the local township-level government, which in the case of Tengdro was the town of Shelkar. Plans to set up a temple management committee at Tengdro were already well advanced by 2012, although the first published reference to the committee dates only to 2018, shortly after the monastery was restored. From that date, however, and perhaps earlier, the temple management committee at Tengdro included some cadres and police officials who either lived in the monastery or made occasional visits during which they stayed in a specially built house near the monastery. In all likelihood, however, the day-to-day running of the monastery and its management committee was carried out and supervised not by the township-level administration, but by the village-resident cadre team in the village, which we know was installed in Dranak from at least 2018. If the township had failed in its oversight work, the village work team was supposed to have covered for it, and vice versa.

The fact that the system of intensive, overlapping monastery management was in place in Tengdro has two important implications for the case of the Tengdro monks. Firstly, it means that the monks had been under close supervision and surveillance by non-local cadres for a year or more before the 2019 police raid. Consequently, their main activities, such as reconstruction of the monastery and holding public festivals, must have had approval from the authorities, as our sources have claimed.

Second, that cadres and police had been stationed in the monastery and the village suggests that, if the monks had done something in the previous year that was illegal, it must have been either very minor or hidden from cadres or police. Everything they did would have been scrutinized either by the village-resident cadre team, by the temple management committee cadres, or by the police stationed in the monastery. None of the evidence Human Rights Watch has collected in the 18 months since the arrests, moreover, has suggested that the monks were involved in any secret or other violations of
Chinese law.

In a hyper-securitized system such as Tibet, particularly in religious affairs, it is safer, if not essential, for cadres to magnify any accusation of illegality made against local people once an accusation has been made by more senior officials. This can lead to a situation in which officials cannot afford to drop or contest a case once it has been initiated, even if the evidence is minimal, for fear of destroying their own careers or livelihoods. Such considerations likely would have been especially pressing for cadres involved in the management of monasteries, seen in Tibet as the most sensitive of all security risks.[100]

Sending Funds Abroad

For officials involved in monitoring the flow of funds and information across China’s borders, similar considerations would have applied: once Lhasa police had accused the Tengdro monks of illegally communicating with exiles, those officials would have been incentivized to define the funds transfer as illegal. This might have contributed in part to the long sentences the monks received.

In 2010, the prominent Tibetan businessman, Dorje Tashi, was given an extraordinarily long punishment—a life sentence—for sending a small donation to the Dalai Lama.[101] This seems not to have been a legal offense at the time because, according to a source familiar with the case, in court, Dorje Tashi was only accused of a minor financial misdemeanor—providing false security for a loan—and not formally charged with sending funds abroad. However, since 2010, policy regarding transnational funding flows has becoming increasingly restrictive in Tibet. A former Tibetan official interviewed by Human Rights Watch in 2019 noted that, “current TAR policies, such as on relations between Tibetans and foreign individuals and family members in exile, which have always been under scrutiny, will be revised and could be managed more strictly.” He added that in particular “the monitoring of Tibetans donating the benefits of policies for the economic development of Tibet to the Dalai will be stepped up and dealt with to the letter.”

The prediction by this official was confirmed by the promulgation of the TAR's “Twenty Prohibitions” of 2019, which specifically forbade the use of online tools to provide funds or other assistance to “establish [or] participate in illegal organizations.” The TAR “Notice on Not Using Information Networks” of November 2020 went further: it outlawed “providing funds” to organizations that support secession (article 5), apparently a reference to the Dalai Lama and the exile administration in India.

Since the regulations were issued, authorities in Tibet have taken steps to enforce the new regulations and end donations to exiles. In June 2020, officials in Nagchu municipality, TAR, detained Tenzin Tharpa, a 39-year-old trader in medicinal herbs and philanthropist from Chaktse (Ch.: Qiaze) township in Driru, Nagchu municipality, and his cousin Lhamo, a 36-year-old mother of three, apparently on charges of having sent money to family members or other Tibetans in India. Lhamo was released for medical reasons after two months in detention, seriously injured and unable to speak. She died two days later, apparently as a result of ill-treatment in custody. The sentence, if any, passed on Tenzin Tharpa is not yet known.[102]

According to the Twenty Prohibitions of 2019 and the Notice of 2020, donations sent by Tibetans or other citizens of China to Tibetans abroad are illegal only if sent to organizations supporting secession or an equivalent objective. Sources report that the larger donations sent by the Tengdro monks were intended for humanitarian relief for their sister monastery and its community in exile, neither of which are affiliated with the exile administration or the Dalai Lama. They therefore do not appear to have broken any laws or regulations. The prosecution instead appears to be part of a broader crackdown on contact or financial flows between Tibetans inside or outside Tibet, whether illegal or not. As with colleagues in other agencies, officials handling the Tengdro case may have sought to advance their careers or to protect themselves by claiming to have found a case of supposedly illegal cross-border funding.
 

Increasing Border Security

The crackdown on the monks of Tengdro monastery coincided with a major drive by the authorities in Tibet to intensify security measures in Tibet’s border counties. Tingri, the county in which Tengdro is located, is one of 21 counties on TAR’s international borders, and, as noted above, the monastery is situated just 60 kilometers north of Mount Everest, on China’s border with Nepal.

The TAR authorities began to place increased emphasis on border counties after Xi Jinping stated in March 2013 that “to govern the country well we must first govern the frontiers well, and to govern the frontiers well we must first ensure stability in Tibet.”[103] Chinese government officials implemented this border-focus policy initially by increasing investment and infrastructure construction in border areas of Tibet—government expenditure in Tingri county increased fourfold between 2013 and 2018,[104] nearly twice the average for a county in Tibet, and officials announced in 2018 that an airport is to be constructed in the county.

However, in October 2017, Xi Jinping issued a statement that residents in Tibetan border areas were to “safeguard Chinese territory” and “become guardians of the sacred land” or “guardians of Chinese territory”[105] Since then, Tibet’s border policy has focused not just on construction, but on the intensification of security measures in border areas. An editorial in the main Party organ in Tibet, the Tibet Daily, in October 2020, explained that this border policy means that Tibet’s priority is to “unswervingly carry out the struggle against separatism” and “to further build the first line of defense of the national security barrier, and resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”[106] The editorial identified the security threat on the Tibetan borders as the current Dalai Lama, whom it described as “the head of the separatist political group conspiring to [carry out] ‘Tibet independence,’ a loyal tool of the international anti-China forces, the general source of social unrest in Tibet, and an obstacle to the establishment of Tibetan Buddhism.”

The new border security measures are apparently intended to further restrict unofficial communications or transit between Tibetans on opposite sides of the border, even if those contacts are with exile religious communities and not with any political organization such as the Dalai Lama’s administration in exile. Officials involved at the border show that they had successfully identified and punished a case of cross-border contact between Tibetans in a border county, even if that contact was commonplace and had no political implications. Officials in border counties, such as Tingri, would have been under pressure to show results in preventing breaches of border security. They would have stood to gain professionally if they could have claimed to have discovered a major breach.

History, Profiling, and the Shelkar Choede Case

As with most legal systems, Chinese law allows for longer sentences if the accused is a recidivist. As far as is known, none of the Tengdro monks had any previous convictions. However, the authorities and ultimately the courts may have been influenced in their decision to impose harsh sentences on the monks not by the record of the individuals in the court, but by the history of previous protests or dissent in their family or community. In other words, under pressure to demonstrate their enthusiasm for applying the principle of preventive control, officials may have inferred a likelihood of future unrest by the Tengdro monks from reports of political dissent in their family or their community in the distant past, including events that took place even before the defendants were born. This does not mean that the Tengdro monks were involved in any political or subversive activity—as we have seen, no evidence of that has emerged apart from minor actions like possessing photos of the Dalai Lama. It means that, given current Chinese approaches to policing, officials may have branded the monks as potential dissidents because of historical acts of political resistance by their ancestors or within their community, whether related to them or not.  This could have been one of the factors leading to the prosecution of the Tengdro monks and the amplification of their sentences.

In fact, Human Rights Watch found no record of unrest, dissent, or protest at Tengdro or in Dranak village during the previous 40 years. But there were acts of resistance to Chinese rule in Dranak in the 1970s, when five people from the village classified as having “reactionary” family backgrounds were imprisoned for allegedly providing assistance to an underground armed guerrilla group that was based in exile. Three of the Tengdro monks were children or grandchildren of Tibetans imprisoned for political offenses in the Maoist era: Choegyal Wangpo is the grandson of Tsering Dondrub, one of the five Tibetans imprisoned in the 1970s; Lobsang Jinpa is the son of Tsewang, another of those five prisoners; and the late Lobsang Zoepa was the son of Tashi, who had been imprisoned for a political offense in the 1960s. In addition, all the Tengdro monks were disciples of Sengdrak Rinpoche, who had fled into exile to avoid living under Chinese rule 60 years earlier. As in China during the Maoist era, when people were routinely persecuted because of the political records of their parents, relatives, or teachers, the state promotion of a new approach to policing and security may have triggered a return to this kind of political profiling, one in which one’s family and local history can be taken as signs of guilt.

Police and officials are also likely to have cited other historical evidence regarding the Tengdro monastery not because of anything the monks had done themselves, but because of a major case of political dissent in the same district 11 years earlier. That case had involved the monastery of Shelkar Choede, 12 kilometers south of Tengdro, of which the authorities would certainly have been aware of when they took up the Tengdro case. In the Shelkar Choede incident, which occurred in May 2008, a small number of monks at Shelkar Choede who had been forced to attend a political education session raised objections when told to denounce the Dalai Lama. This led to an argument between the monks and the Chinese cadres leading the session. The objections raised by the monks to the denunciation of their root teacher, as a matter of religious rather than political belief, were not illegal under Chinese law. However, the reaction of the authorities was a raid on the monastery by armed police, which ended with the detention of 12 monks.[107]

Until now, almost nothing has been known about the punishment given to those 12 monks, except that the most prominent one, named Khyenrab Tharchin, served five years in prison for participating in the argument before being released in poor health in 2013; he died in October 2016 at the age of 35, apparently as a result of mistreatment in prison.[108]  While researching this report, however, Human Rights Watch learned that nine of the Shelkar Choede monks detained in the 2008 incident have since been released but are prohibited from travelling outside their native villages. Two of the other monks who had argued with the re-education cadres were given extraordinarily long sentences: Khyenrab Nyima is said to have received a 15-year sentence, and Tenzin Gepel is said to have received a 17-year sentence. Both these two monks are still serving these sentences. Although the Shelkar Choede incident was extremely minor—it did not involve any public demonstration, banners, slogans, parade in the streets, let alone violence—the authorities had treated it with extreme severity.

The reasons for the exceptionally long sentences imposed on the two monks remain unknown. The new information about the Shelkar Choede incident in 2008 shows that authorities were already imposing hyperinflated sentences for minor expressions of political dissent by monks in Tingri even a decade ago. There were exceptional factors at that time: the situation in 2008 was especially sensitive because of a major outbreak of unrest across Tibet two months earlier, and the Shelkar Choede monks were treated with additional severity because they belong to the school of Tibetan Buddhism headed by the Dalai Lama. Nevertheless, their case indicates the proclivity of Tingri officials to treat monks and monasteries with extraordinary harshness.

The two monasteries had no formal connections and belong to different Buddhist schools, but there are some overlaps in their histories. For example, the late Khyenrab Jampel (1932–2007), a highly respected monk who led the reconstruction of Shelkar Choede monastery, was born in Gyalnor valley, close to Dranak, and was the uncle of Choegyal Wangpo. In the Tengdro case, officials may have imagined or feared a link with the earlier incident at Shelkar Choede and may have thus theorized that the Tengdro case had the potential to revert to a political protest of some kind, as had happened with the earlier case.

It is impossible to determine if the Tengdro monks were punished more severely because of informal connections with Shelkar Choede or because of the political histories of their families, but the similarities between the two cases are striking. Both involved indications of sympathy or respect for the Dalai Lama or other exile co-religionists, occurred among monks and in a monastery, and took place in the same border area township. Both also appear to have involved actions that were legal even under Chinese law, led to trials that were never publicized, and resulted in extraordinarily long sentences for the participants that have only now become known.

Since the Tengdro monks had no previous record of dissent, officials could not use recidivism to justify the long sentences given to them. But instead, in the new climate now being fostered by the principle of preventive policing, it is possible that officials invoked the family and local histories of the monks and their community in order to justify the extreme sentences. Taken together, these and other factors suggest that the draconian sentencing of the four monks was due in part to pressure on multiple officials to show that they had not failed in their responsibilities and to the steadily increasing impact of preventive policing as a security principle in Tibet.

Acknowledgments

This report was researched and written by members of the China team at Human Rights Watch. The report was edited by Sophie Richardson, China director. James Ross, legal and policy director, provided legal review. Joseph Saunders, deputy program director, provided program review. Colleagues in our Business and Human Rights Division provided review. Production assistance was provided by Racqueal Legerwood, Asia coordinator; Travis Carr, digital publication coordinator; and Fitzroy Hepkins, administrative manager.

Human Rights Watch is deeply grateful to all those who shared their stories with us.