Tsultrim Gyatso (Chinese: 次成嘉措) is a Tibetan Buddhist monk of Labrang Tashikhyil Monastery in Xiahe, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province. On May 21, 2009, he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Gannan Prefecture Intermediate People’s Court, in a trial that was closed to the public.
Gyatso was arrested in May 2008, in the months after protests against Chinese rule swept through Labrang and other Tibetan areas beginning in March of that year. The International Campaign for Tibet reported that he and a fellow Labrang monk, Thabkey Gyatso (Chinese: 塔克嘉措, rendered in the ICT report as “Dike Tankai”), were tried together on May 21, 2009. Tsultrim Gyatso received life imprisonment for what the report described as the crime of “splitting the nation”; Thabkey Gyatso received 15 years for “incitement to split the nation.” Human Rights Watch, in its May 2019 compendium of Tibetan political-prisoner cases, records the charge against Tsultrim Gyatso as “endangering state security.” Both monks appealed, according to ICT.
The case drew attention in part because of what happened around the defense. The families of the two monks sought to hire Li Fangping, a prominent Beijing civil-rights lawyer, to represent them. Li traveled to Gansu to prepare the defense but was denied access to his clients; on July 6, 2009, the Gansu High People’s Court informed him that the monks had already taken on another lawyer. His colleague Jiang Tianyong, who had worked with him on the case, was among the Beijing lawyers whose licenses were cancelled that year.
After the trial, the two monks were held in the Gansu Province State Security Department detention center, according to ICT’s July 2009 report. News of Tsultrim Gyatso’s condition has been scarce ever since. Human Rights Watch’s 2019 report notes that, according to a recent report at the time, he had been taken to a hospital in Lanzhou for an operation in 2017. The same report recorded that Thabkey Gyatso had been described in 2011 as “half-paralyzed and with failing eyesight” and had spent a long period in the prison hospital at Tianshui in 2018.
No release has been reported. On the evidence available, Tsultrim Gyatso remains imprisoned on a life sentence, with his most recent dated reporting from 2019.
Case summary
- Arrest: May 2008
- Trial: May 21, 2009, closed trial, Gannan Prefecture Intermediate People’s Court, Gansu
- Sentence: Life imprisonment — “endangering state security” (HRW) / “splitting the nation” (ICT)
- Status: Imprisoned (life sentence); most recent reporting May 2019
Further reading
The full documented case record for Tsultrim Gyatso (次成嘉措) is preserved in a companion media archive, which gathers the case chronology, cited sources, and evidentiary limitations in one place.