Netizen Dasher sentenced to ten years for “Separatism”

After almost two years of detention for sending photos and reports of the March 2008 protests in Tibet, a netizen named Dasher was convicted of “separatism” and sentenced to ten years in late February of this year by an intermediate court in Lhasa, according to Reporters Without Borders.  He is currently detained in Chushur Prison in Lhasa. 

Dasher, a Tibetan who spent part of his life in Nepal, was arrested along with approximately 50 other Tibetans, including his own father, Adri Rinpoche, who was the head of a Tibetan Buddhist monastery before his arrest, following the March 2008 protests.  Due to the heavy level of Chinese internet surveillance in Tibet, many of the accounts, photos, and videos sent out of the province following the March 2008 protests were intercepted and later used as evidence of “separatism” in the arrests and subsequent trials of the “at least 50” Tibetans mentioned in the Reporters Without Borders article.