(Please contact Free Tibet Campaign if acting after 26 January 2005)

Many thanks to all those who have taken part in the various actions to save Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche's life. There has been at least one positive indication to the international campaign to save Rinpoche's life. This came in an Agence France Press (AFP) article on 13 December 2004, which reported a local official, named Zheng, in the southwest Sichuan province prison administrative bureau, as saying, "This monk has not been executed. I heard they're considering changing his penalty to life imprisonment or a fixed-term penalty". He then went on to say that it was "because he behaved himself well in prison", although he did not know when a decision would be made on a possible sentence reduction. However, prior to this article, on 10 December 2004, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua, reacted negatively to a US Congress resolution calling for Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche's life to be saved and for him to be released as "completely groundless". Traditionally suspended death sentences are commuted to life imprisonment dependent on the behaviour of the prisoner. However, if China decides to commute his suspended death sentence to life imprisonment, it will be an effective death sentence given the prevalence of torture and terrible prison conditions in Tibet's prisons.

In the recent UK and EU human rights dialogues in November 2004 China declared that 23 January 2005 would be the date that Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche's suspended death sentence would expire. It was only in February 2004 that China had previously given 26 January 2005 as the date of expiry. There has been a great deal of confusion over the exact date of when his sentence would expire; what is clear is that international pressure may well be working.

Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche was accused of taking part in "causing explosions" and "splittist activities" and was sentenced on 2 December 2002 to a two year suspended death sentence, which was subsequently confirmed at an appeal on 26 January 2003. The only evidence was a 'confession', later retracted amidst claims of torture, from his co-accused, Lobsang Dhondup. Dhondup, tragically, was executed immediately following the appeal on 26 January 2003.

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