"...the greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone.
Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter."
- Bill Mollison
-------- Original Message --------
Five years in jail for planting trees?
I think that we should plant a tree across from every Chinese embassy
for
every day that Rinchen is jailed. SM
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/world/asia/04tibet.html?_r=1&hp
July 3, 2010
China Jails Tibetan Environmentalist
By REUTERS
BEIJING, July 3 (Reuters) - A Chinese
court
on Saturday sentenced a Tibetan environmentalist who organized
villagers
to pick up litter and plant trees to five years in jail for inciting to
split the nation, his lawyer said.
The environmentalist, Rinchen Samdrup,
is the third brother in his family to be jailed. Mr. Samdrup ran an
environmental
group in the Tibet Autonomous
Region near Sichuan Province that organized about 1,700 local villagers
to reforest the area and report poaching, and also ran a small
magazine.
His group worked with international conservation groups and was praised
by Chinese media.
Exile Tibetan groups say Mr. Samdrup ran
afoul of powerful local interests after accusing a local police officer
of poaching.
Mr. Samdrup was accused of posting a
favorable
article about the Dalai
Lama on his website, his
lawyer,
Xia Jun, said. He pleaded not guilty But the Chamdo prefecture court
convicted
him of incitement to split the country, the lawyer said, and deprived
him
of his political rights for three years. He has 10 days to appeal.
Late last year, Mr. Samdrup’s youngest
brother, Jigme Namgyal, was sentenced to 21 months of re-education
through
labor for endangering state security for assisting Mr. Samdrup in
running
his environmental group. The court found he had helped compile three
audio-visual
disks on the ecology of the region, possessed materials regarding the
Dalai
Lama, incited locals to interfere with government work and tried to
register
the group with the government.
In June, Mr. Samdrup’s other brother
Karma
Samdrup, a wealthy collector of antique black-and-white Tibetan amulet
beads who had tried to defent his brothers, was sentenced to 15 years
in
jail by a court in neighbouring Xinjiang for excavating and robbing
ancient
tombs, a charge originally brought and dropped in 1998.
Several Tibetan artists and intellectuals
have been detained or have disappeared in recent months in what
activists
say amounts to the broadest suppression of Tibetan culture and
expression
for years.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Stephen Mills
Director, International Programs
Sierra Club
408 C Street, N.E.
Washington, DC 20002
tel: 202.675.6691
fax:202.547.6009