Taiwan bats for prisoners of conscience in China

Nun Chemey in an undated photo. Taiwan earlier this week expressed concern over prisoners of conscience in China, including Tibetans, even as reports of arbitrary arrests and harsh sentencing continues to come out of Tibet. According to the Dharamshala based Central Tibetan Administration, a Chinese court has sentenced a Tibetan nun to three years in prison in Karze region of easter Tibet for her alleged role in political activities. Chemey, a nun from the Lamdrag Nunnery, was among the many Tibetans who were arrested in a major crackdown in the region in 2010 and were later handed down harsh prison terms. “The Chinese authorities informed the family members of Chemey about the prison sentence a year after the nun went missing,” CTA said. “It is not known where she is being confined and under what charges she was sentenced.” On December 11, Taiwan’s parliament passed a resolution demanding the government to pay attention to over 4,000 prisoners of conscience detained by the Chinese communist regime. The Epoch Times reported that the resolution was submitted by legislator Yu Mei-nu, Chairwoman of the Association for International Human Rights, a newly formed sub-committee in Taiwan’s Legislature. “Yesterday was International Human Rights Day, and we are delighted to see the passing of a resolution at yesterday’s session that calls attention to Chinese prisoners of conscience including: pro-democracy activists, human-rights advocates, Falun Gong practitioners, and Tibetans,“ the report cited Yu as saying. In their new resolution, the lawmakers stated: “The U.S. State Department’s 2011 Human Rights Report and the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s 2011 annual report both addressed the issue of illicit organ harvesting for transplantation from Falun Gong practitioners and death-row inmates in China to make profits, and also the severe repression inflicted on the Tibetan people by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) throughout all Tibetan regions and at all levels, not only policies of persecution and abusive arrest of Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns at monasteries and nunneries, but also extending to the detention of famous singers and writers engaged in artistic performance, and the increasing repression which has led to the shocking series of self-immolations by Tibetans protesting repressive Chinese rule.”