Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, 1950 – 2015

The New York Times carried an article on Tuesday, describing the aftermath of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche‘s (Tibetan: བསྟན་འཛིན་བདེ་ལེགས་; Chinese: 丹增德勒仁波切) death in a prison in Chongqing. Tenzin Delek had been in prison since 2002/2003, and there’s a Wikipedia entry about his background and story. The authorities reportedly turned down a request by Tenzin Delek’s sister to preserve the body for 15 days as demanded by Tibetan Buddhist tradition. An autopsy, or any chance of one, isn’t mentioned in the reports.

Amnesty International published a report on Tenzin Deleg’s case in September 2003, less than a year after his arrest, citing doubts that detention and trial had been up to standard.

According to a Reuters report, on July 16, Sichuan Province’s propaganda department said it was unaware of the case, and an official who picked up the telephone at the provincial police department said she had not heard of the case.

Three days later, on July 19, the BBC‘s Mandarin service quoted Xinhua newsagency as saying that Tenzin Delek had died of a heart attack:

Because Tenzin Delek frequently refused medical treatment or medication, he died from heart disease.

丹增德勒是因为在狱中经常拒绝就医或者吃药，患心脏病而死亡。

The BBC also quoted Tenzin Delek’s sister (Chinese name: Zhuoga or 卓嘎) as saying that the authorities had not given her an explanation about the cause of her brother’s death, which had added to her doubts.

According to Xinhua, as quoted by the BBC, a prison warden had found Tenzin Delek on July 12, and that the prisoner had stopped breathing during an afternoon nap. According to the Xinhua report, he died in an intensive care unit, an hour after having been found.

Reacting to a call from Washington to investigate Tenzin Delek’s death, Huanqiu Shibao reportedly wrote that America should forget about dragging another “criminal” out of prison, and described Washington’s attention to human rights issues as a method to maintain self-confidence while facing China’s rise.

The actual wording of the Huanqiu article can be found here.

The New York Times article mentioned at the beginning of this post also reported that Tenzin Delek’s sister and niece were taken away from a restaurant in Chengdu by police officers on Friday, and hadn’t been seen since (i. e. not by July 21). It doesn’t become clear to me if this is the same sister in both cases. The name of the 52-year-old arrested sister (Dolkar Lhamo) sounds different from the one mentioned earlier in the article.

Tsering Woeser has collected a number of articles concerning Tenzin Delek this month.

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Updates/Related

» 王力雄：丹增德勒求“法”记, Woeser, July 26, 2015

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