This archive collects the documented reporting on the case of Tsultrim Gyatso (次成嘉措), the Labrang monastery monk sentenced to life imprisonment in May 2009. It preserves the source chronology and notes where reporting differs, so the record stays checkable as new information appears.
July 17, 2009 — International Campaign for Tibet. In a report on lawyers being blocked from Tibetan cases, ICT named Tsultrim Gyatso (Chinese: Cicheng Jiacuo) and Thabkey Gyatso (Chinese: Dike Tankai) as two Labrang monks sentenced at a closed trial on May 21 by the Gannan Prefecture Intermediate People’s Court. Tsultrim Gyatso: life imprisonment for “splitting the nation.” Thabkey Gyatso: 15 years for “incitement to split the nation.” Both appealed and were being held in the Gansu Province State Security Department detention center. The report detailed the families’ failed attempt to retain lawyer Li Fangping and the obstruction of his colleague Jiang Tianyong.
May 27, 2009 — Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy. “China denies family access to two Labrang monks serving lengthy prison sentences.” (Cited by ICT; full text to be click-verified at publication.)
May 21, 2019 — Human Rights Watch. In “China: Free Tibetans Unjustly Imprisoned,” a compendium of roughly 80 Tibetan cases, HRW listed Tsultrim Gyatso as case no. 2 under “2008年之后遭重判案件” (heavy sentences after 2008): a Labrang monk arrested in May 2008, sentenced to life on May 21, 2009, for “endangering state security.” HRW added that, according to a recent report, he had been taken to a hospital in Lanzhou for an operation in 2017, and that Thabkey Gyatso had spent a long period in the prison hospital at Tianshui in 2018.
Reporting gaps. No verdict text, indictment, or official record of the May 2009 trial has surfaced publicly. The exact prison of detention after 2009 is not confirmed in open reporting. No age, birth date, or monastic rank for Tsultrim Gyatso is given in the available sources, and none should be added without a sourced record.
Provenance note. The two detailed anchors of this case — ICT (2009) and HRW (2019) — agree on the monastery, the arrest period, the trial date and court, and the life sentence. They differ slightly in how they render the charge (“splitting the nation” versus “endangering state security”), a difference in wording that may reflect different descriptions of the same verdict. Both accounts are cited below; the discrepancy is flagged rather than resolved.
The profile page for Tsultrim Gyatso (次成嘉措) gathers the biography, the case narrative, and the current status in full.