Life imprisonment for Tibet’s richest man
Jane Macartney, Beijing
The Times (UK)
August 12, 2010
A Chinese court has sentenced to life imprisonment a hotel owner believed to the country’s richest Tibetan businessman.
Once hailed by authorities in Tibet as one of the region’s top 10 most outstanding young people, 37-year-old Dorje Tashi was sentenced on June 26 after a three-day trial by the Lhasa Municipality Intermediate People’s Court, Tibetan sources told /The Times/.
His elder brother, Dorje Tseten, was jailed for six years, the sources said.
No details were available about the charges on which the two brothers were convicted. If the charges were politically linked then such secrecy is not unusual in Tibet where officials are anxious not to stir up renewed unrest among the deeply Buddhist population, many of whom resent Beijing rule and yearn for the return of the exiled Dalai Lama.
The absence of any reports in the Chinese state-run media underscored the possibility that the arrests of the two men may have been related to activities deemed by the authorities to be of a political nature.
However, court sources have said the conviction was based on “illegal business operations” involving his Yak Hotel — one of the best-known and oldest in Lhasa. They refused to say whether political charges had contributed to the severity of the sentence.
The court confiscated all of Dorje Tashi’s personal property, estimated at 4.3 billion yuan (£430 million), the sources said.
Dorje Tashi was arrested just weeks after an anti-Chinese riot rocked the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on March 8, 2008 and had been held incommunicado and without charges ever since. His elder brother was detained a few months later.
The businessman was well known in Lhasa after he founded the Yak Hotel, one of the first private inns to open in the city and situated on one of the main roads in the old part of the town. The Yak Hotel remains a favourite among foreign and domestic tourists visiting the capital of the Himalayan region, serving both Chinese food and a menu listing cappuccinos and pasta to appeal to foreign visitors. It expanded rapidly from a small two-storey hostel in the mid-1980s to a sprawling compound with a restaurant overlooking the street.
Dorje Tashi had many other business interests and was believed to have close links with the Chinese authorities in Tibet that had enabled him to build up his enterprises and which prompted many Tibetans to regard him as something of a turncoat.
Shortly after his arrest, reports surfaced that he had been held on charges of corruption. However, Tibetan sources said there were also rumours that, like many other well-off Tibetans, he had donated some of his wealth to monasteries or even to the Dalai Lama.
Such donations would have enraged the authorities after most of the main monasteries in and around Lhasa staged peaceful demonstrations in the days leading up to the March 14, 2008 riot.
Robbie Barnett, a Tibet expert at Columbia University , said the harsh sentence underlined talk in Tibet of a pattern or retribution against prosperous Tibetans suspected of giving money to monasteries.
He said: “It looks like a long-term drive among Tibet officials to oppose and criticise lay donations to monasteries. It is baffling because leading businessmen have always avoided politics is far as anyone as ever known and have benefited from the current Chinese economic system.”
He said the sentencing of such a prominent Tibetan figure could have been kept secret to avoid inflaming local sentiment. “This risks causing deep rifts between the Tibetan community and the government.”