Gonpo Kyi Protests for Brother’s Retrial Despite Police Beatings

By Tenzin Chokyi

DHARAMSALA, 6 Nov: Gonpo Kyi, the sister of jailed Tibetan businessman Dorjee Tashi, has reportedly sustained internal injuries and multiple bone fractures following repeated assaults by Chinese police during protests demanding a fair retrial for her brother, according to the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT).

Despite the alleged violence, Gonpo Kyi staged another protest outside the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) Higher People’s Court in Lhasa on 26 October, holding a portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping and a petition demanding that her brother’s defence lawyers be granted full access to his case files and that a public retrial be convened.

Information shared with ICT by sources close to the family indicates that Gonpo Kyi has staged repeated protests outside the court over the past four years, including in June and August this year. Police have allegedly beaten, dragged away and detained her during these demonstrations, causing a broken arm, bone fractures, internal bleeding and other chronic health complications.

Footage of the latest protest, provided to ICT by a Tibetan resident in Belgium, Sakar Tashi, shows Gonpo Kyi holding her petition while her husband, Choekyong, films the demonstration. When police ordered him to stop recording, he refused, questioning the legality of the proceedings against Dorjee Tashi.

ICT also reported that authorities maintain round-the-clock surveillance of Dorjee Tashi’s elder brother, Dorjee Tseten, with plainclothes agents allegedly following him and forcing him out of Lhasa during politically sensitive periods.

Dorjee Tashi, a prominent Tibetan entrepreneur and philanthropist who owned the Yak Hotel in Lhasa, was detained following the 2008 protests across Tibet. On 17 May 2010, the Lhasa Intermediate People’s Court sentenced him to life imprisonment on loan fraud charges involving 1.5 million yuan in a secret trial that ICT described as lacking due process and credible evidence. His brother Dorjee Tseten was separately sentenced to six years in prison.