PROFILES IN COURAGE: DAY 14

Dolma Kyab (Pen name: Lobsang Kelsang Gyatso)
Age: 33
Writer, Teacher, Historian, Political Commentator

Dolma Kyab was born in 1976 in eastern Tibet. As a young man, he took advantage of all the available educational opportunities available to him and in 1995, set out to purse a career in education. He joined the Teacher’s Training Center and served as a teacher at a middle school in Qilian County (Ch: Haibei Tibetan Autonomous Region). He went on to study education at Beijing University, completing his studies in 2003. He then traveled to India to learn English and Hindi. He returned to Tibet in May 2004 and was hired as a history teacher at a middle school in Lhasa.

Dolma Kyab is a prolific writer, and was working on a comprehensive political analysis of Chinese rule in Tibet when he was arrested by the Chinese authoriteis in 2005. Written in Chinese, his manuscript “Sao dong de Ximalayashan” (Himalaya on Stir) covered 57 topics including democracy, Tibet’s sovereignty, Tibet under communist rule, colonialism, religion and belief, and so forth. Alongside this manuscript, he was developing a political geography of Tibet, and though comparatively short, it made mention of sensitive topics, like the location and number of Chinese military camps in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).

On June 9, 2005 Dolma Kyab was arrested in Lhasa at the middle school where he taught and taken to the TAR Public Security Bureau Detention Center, popularly known as “Seitru” in Tibetan. His writings were viewed as threatening to the control of the Communist Party and he was labeled a “counter-revolutionary” and charged with “endangering state security.”

While waiting for his trial at Seitru, Dolma Kyab contracted tuberculosis.

On September 16, 2005, he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Lhasa People’s Intermediate Court. A subsequent appeal made by his family was rejected on November 30, 2005, and the 10-year sentence was upheld.

Dolma Kyab was moved to the Seilong Labor Camp in Xining in early July 2007. He is reportedly in very poor health.

Dolma Kyab did nothing more than intellectually challenge the legitimacy of China’s rule in Tibet. He has been unjustly imprisoned and silenced. We commit to redoubling our efforts to push for the release of Dolma Kyab and the many other TIbetan writers and scholars targeted by the Chinese authorities for expressing their political beliefs.