Kunchok Tsephel, an official in a Chinese government environmental department and founder of the influential Tibetan literary website, Chodme (‘Butter-Lamp’, www.tibetcm.com), has been sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of disclosing state secrets.
Thirty-nine year old Kunchok Tsephel was detained in the early hours of the morning on February 26. His house was ransacked and his computer, camera and mobile phone seized. His family had no idea where he was until last week, according to the same sources. They were summoned to court on November 12 to hear the verdict of 15 years imprisonment after a closed-door trial at the Intermediate People’s Court of Kanlho (Chinese: Gannan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu province.

Kunchok Tsephel, who was born into a nomadic family in 1970 in Machu (Chinese: Maqu) county, Gannan, the eastern Tibetan area of Amdo, is fluent in Tibetan, English and Chinese. He studied English and Chinese languages at Beijing Nationality University and from 1997-99, continued to study English at North Western Nationality University in Lanzhou. In 2004, he was recruited as a Tibetan and English language teacher at the Tibetan Nationality Middle School in Machu, in addition to his work for the Chinese government environmental department. He founded his website on Tibetan arts and literature in 2005, together with a young Tibetan poet Kyabchen Dedrol. The website, which was shut down by the authorities several times over the past few years, was self-funded with a mission of promoting Tibetan arts and literature.

According to his friends, Kunchok Tsephel is in poor health after nine months of detention and interrogation and there are fears for his welfare. Until his detention, he provided the main source of income for his family; his wife, who is also a government worker, is currently caring for their sick daughter.

Kunchok Tsephel had undergone an earlier period of detention in 1995 linked to suspicion of involvement in political activities. He was tortured and interrogated but protested his innocence and was released without charge after two months.

One of Kunchok Tsephel’s close friends, who is now in exile, said today: “His family has endured nine months of agonizing waiting after Kunchok disappeared in February. Now they are even more distraught by this long sentence. Because the charges related to state secrets, they do not even know why Kunchok has been sentenced to 15 years, and he has been denied access to a lawyer.”