"Suppressing Dissent: Hostile Elements II - Political Imprisonment in Tibet 1987 – 2000" (to be published by TIN tomorrow, Friday 23 February 2001) reports that the number of Tibetan political prisoners currently in detention has fallen from 538 in January 1999 to 266 in January 2001. Monks and nuns make up 74 per cent of these prisoners, and approximately a fifth are females. There has been a steady decline in new detentions since 1997 in central Tibet, concurrent with the implementation and intensification of the Patriotic Education campaign, which requires monks, nuns and lay people to denounce the Dalai Lama. However, the number of monks and nuns known to have been detained as a result of opposing the Patriotic Education campaign is a small fraction of those who have been expelled from their monasteries or who have fled from Tibet.

Monks and nuns who are currently in detention come from more than 65 monasteries and nunneries, while lay detainees are affiliated to schools, businesses, government offices and even the Chinese Communist Party, according to TIN’s prisoner database. Prisoners and ex-prisoners recorded in the database have been held in at least 100 prisons, detention centres or other places of incarceration throughout Tibetan areas.

While the high levels of protest and detention which prevailed in the Tibet Autonomous Region have declined since 1996, the incidence of detention in non-TAR Tibetan areas is rising, albeit from a lower base. Non-TAR detentions represented one third of known political detentions of Tibetans in 1996-2000, compared to only six per cent in the period 1987-1991. In Tibetan areas outside the TAR, a larger proportion of detainees are students and educators and protest appears to have remained more geographically diffuse than inside the TAR.

Thirty-seven Tibetan political prisoners have died since 1987 as a direct result of abuse in prison - a rate of one in 50 - according to a conservative analysis of TIN data. Twenty of these were at Tibet's Number One prison, Drapchi, in Lhasa. One of the major factors deterring Tibetans from running the risk of detention may be Drapchi’s fearsome reputation for maltreatment of prisoners. The introduction of forced military-style exercises has been the most negative development in prison routine at Drapchi in recent years, and former political prisoners report that it has had a harmful impact on the health of most political prisoners.

Sentence extensions have become more common as a method of punishing Tibetan political prisoners who openly declare their political views or who engage in other activities in prison that are deemed politically unacceptable. No punishment is more dreaded by Tibetan prisoners than a sentence extension - Tibetans know that in institutions where many prisoners have died or suffered serious injury and illness resulting from abuse, a lengthened sentence is frequently a precursor to a shortened lifespan. The average sentence currently being served has increased to eight years eight months as the pool of prisoners is distilled to contain those with longer sentences. For those prisoners who have received sentence extensions the average sentence is 12 years six months. At Drapchi, about 27 per cent of currently detained political prisoners are known to have extended sentences.

"Suppressing Dissent" reports that beatings, commonly employing objects such as wood or metal rods, sticks, lengths of wire, or plastic or rubber tubing filled with sand, electric shocks and other forms of abuse are routine during police investigation and after detainees are sentenced to prison. Prisoners may be tightly handcuffed or bound for extended periods, sometimes in painfully contorted positions, and pricked with pins or burned with cigarette butts. Between interrogation sessions, isolation may be heightened by withholding sleep, food or water, and by forcing the prisoner to endure protracted periods of darkness, cold or filthy conditions.

While "Suppressing Dissent" presents the most detailed account currently available of the issue of political imprisonment in Tibet, no report on this subject can be comprehensive due to China’s efforts to prevent human rights information reaching the outside world. Information on political imprisonment in Tibet is generally treated as "state secrets", and therefore an attempt to pass on that information without official permission is regarded as "espionage".

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1. Suppressing Dissent: Hostile Elements II by Steven D Marshall is a companion volume to Hostile Elements: A study of Political Imprisonment in Tibet 1987-1998 (TIN 1999). Steven D Marshall is also the author of Rukhag 3: The Nuns of Drapchi Prison (TIN 2000) and co-author of the CD-ROM Tibet Outside the TAR with Dr. Susette Cooke.

2. Suppressing Dissent: Hostile Elements II is available from Tibet Information Network (price £13.95/US$20, plus postage and packing.

3. For orders or subscriptions (TIN Publications subscribers automatically receive a copy) please email TIN on tin@tibetinfo.net or fax on 020 7814 9015 or see Suppressing Dissent: Hostile Elements II