Release Dawa Gyaltsen
Dawa Gyaltsen (born circa 1960) is currently serving an 18 year prison term for organizing "splittist activities" in the province of Nagchu in 1995.
Born and raised in Nagchu county, Dawa Gyaltsen was inspired to protest Chinese re-education policies that were implemented in the local Nagchu Shabten Monastery. Dawa’s younger brother, Tenzin Dorje, is a monk at the monastery where "patriotic education" classes were instituted in 1994. Much of this propagandist "education" involved condemning separatist activities and monks were often forced to denounce His Holiness the Dalai Lama and to destroy religious objects and texts.
In April 1995 Dawa and other supporters secretly put up posters marked with ‘Free Tibet’ and other pro-independence logos. They also circulated information complied by Dawa on Tibet’s history as a free nation. As a result of this action, the local Public Security Bureau launched an investigation. In November of that year Dawa and a fellow activist fled to Lhasa, but despite their efforts to evade Chinese authorities, they were captured. Dawa and his brother were both charged as ‘prime activists’ and were given a combined sentence of 31 years. In January 1997 the pair were transferred to Drapchi Prison. Dawa’s 18 year sentence was later reduced, first by 16 months in 2002 and then by an additional 9 months in 2004.
Despite these minimal reductions in sentence, Dawa continues to languish in Chinese prisons. In an official statement given by Tezin Tsundue, a fellow detainee at Situ Detention Center, in June 2006 in London, England, Dawa is receiving inhuman treatment and is suffering ill-health as a result of the torture he is enduring as a prisoner of the Chinese.