The Society for Threatened Peoples STP (Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker GfbV) demanded on Tuesday the immediate release of the Tibetan writer Tagyal, who was arrested on Friday by the Chinese security forces. He had in an open letter together with seven other Tibetan intellectuals criticised China ’s aid for the earthquake in the province of Qinghai and expressed his sorrow concerning the many victims. The writer, who under the pseudonym "Shogdung” is known to many Tibetans, was like many other helpers forbidden to enter the disaster area. "It is clear that the authorities wanted to conceal the extent of the catastrophe in the district of Yushu”, said the STP Asia consultant, Ulrich Delius. "The Chinese leaders always fall back into the worst times of censorship although they have promised not longer to hide or play down natural disasters.”

Buddhist monks were in the days after the quake even ordered by the authorities to leave the disaster area. They had worked particularly hard in rescuing the injured. Tibetans criticised that Chinese helpers took part only half-heartedly in the search for those buried in the ruins. The authorities are also accused of playing down the consequences of the earthquake. While official China spoke for days of only a few hundred dead, it now appears that there are at least 2,200 mainly Tibetan victims.

"The disaster of Sichuan must not be repeated”, demanded Delius. "Critics of government mistakes must not be callously silenced.” After the earthquake in the province of Sichuan in May 2008 several Chinese intellectuals were arrested because they documented the names of 7,000 children who were killed in the disaster. On the charge of "undermining the authority of the state” the writer Tan Zuoren was finally sentenced to five years imprisonment. The artist Ai Weiwei, who in August 2009 wanted to speak as a witness on his behalf at a court hearing was beaten up by the police. A few weeks later he had to undergo an emergency operation in Munich for the serious injuries he had suffered.

Ulrich Delius will be glad to provide further information at asien@gfbv.de