Reported by Sangyal Kunchok for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Chinese authorities are banning public discussion of a popular Tibetan religious teacher six years after his death in a Sichuan prison, removing him from official religious histories and shutting down an online chat group devoted to his memory, Tibetan sources say.
Tulku Tenzin Delek, 65, died under mysterious circumstances on July 12, 2015, 13 years into a 22-year sentence following what rights groups and supporters called a wrongful conviction on a charge of bombing a public square in Sichuan’s provincial capital Chengdu in April 2002.
Widely respected among Tibetans for his efforts to protect Tibetan culture and the environment, he was initially sentenced to death, but his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. An assistant, Lobsang Dondrub, was executed almost immediately, prompting an outcry from rights activists who questioned the fairness of the trial.
Monasteries in Nyagchu (in Chinese, Yajiang) county in Sichuan’s Kardze (Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture has now been forced by Chinese authorities to remove references to Delek, a well-known religious figure in Kardze, from histories of their establishments, according to a Tibetan source living in exile.
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