Leading Tibetan Blogger Arrested by Chinese Security Police (VIDEO)

Jamyang Kyi is also a singer and songwriter and has released several well-received albums.

(KATHMANDU, Tibet) - Chinese authorities in Tibet have arrested a leading Tibetan writer, television producer, and performer in the midst of a major crackdown on anti-Chinese protests in the region, Radio Free Asia reports.

Plainclothes state security officers escorted Jamyang Kyi, who has traveled widely and performed and lectured in the United States, from her office at state-owned Qinghai TV on April 1st, an authoritative source told RFA’s Tibetan service. "She never returned," a source in Siling [in Chinese, Xining] said. "People were speculating that she was detained in a guesthouse for interrogation."

Another authoritative source in Beijing said she had been formally arrested by the Xining Public Security Bureau, although the charges against her were unknown. In China, a formal arrest almost always precedes a conviction. "Security people went to Jamyang Kyi's house to search her computer, her mailing list, and contact numbers and took all these away," another source in Xining said.

Jamyang Kyi, in her 40s, has worked as a producer in the Tibetan-language section of state-run Qinghai TV for two decades. She is well-know among Tibetans as an activist on women’s issues, and she toured the United States to sing and lecture in 2006.

Her blog—at tibetabc.cn/user1/jamyangkyi/index.html —is popular among young, computer-savvy Tibetans, although she stopped updating it several months before anti-Chinese protests erupted in Lhasa in mid-March and then spread to other regions.

Born in Mangra county [in Chinese, Guinan], in remote northwestern Qinghai province, Kyi is also a singer and songwriter and has released several well-received albums: "Prayer," a music CD, and two video CDs, "Distant Lover" and "Karma." Her music comprises elements of both modern pop and traditional folk music from all areas of Tibet.

Jamyang Kyi hasn’t been detained in the past, according to Tibet experts, and the specific reason for her arrest this month is unclear.

But in the wake of the largest and most violent anti-Chinese protests in Tibet in almost 50 years, authorities are questioning numerous Tibetans from the Kham, Amdo, and Lhasa regions who have travelled internationally in recent years, Tibetan sources say.

And Qinghai TV has seen controversy in the past. After the Dalai Lama urged Tibetans to abandon the practice of wearing fur in 2006, Chinese authorities ordered Tibetan-language Qinghai TV broadcasters to add fur trimmings to their traditional clothing—in what residents described as a transparent jab at the exiled leader.

Che Xizhen, head of the Qinghai provincial propaganda department, and Rinchen Gyal, head of the provincial Communist Party’s ideology-focused United Front Work Department, visited Qinghai TV and announced that Tibetan-language broadcasters must wear fur-lined traditional Tibetan clothing.

"This is a matter of politics and as such, you all will have to add fur trimmings. If you don’t have furs, then you’ll have to buy furs and we’ll allocate you funding for that," the officials told broadcasters, according to a Tibetan source.

Original reporting by RFA’s Tibetan service. Tibetan service director: Jigme Ngapo. Written and produced in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.

Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation that broadcasts news and information in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media.

Watch this YouTube video, it is by Tsering gyurmey and jamyang kyi. The song is titled Le tro and it features a good deal of scenery from Tibet.

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Albert Marnell June 19, 2008 5:55 am (Pacific time)

James, Your response to Susan was moronic. She goes into great detail and you come up with a standard adolescent attack on her mental health. You are just ignorant with limited life experience. As I have said many times, on the German side of my family (Lutherans) during the 1933 to 1945 reign of fascism, my relatives could not even say a word against the regime or be arrested. Two of my great-grandfathers were murdered in the hospital along with thousands of others...again...they were Christians. These things do happen. I wish people would see the Julia Jentsch version of Sophie Scholl-The Final Days. This country is ruled by the most powerful of bankers. There is a group of elite mentioned in "The Carter Years". This is not a free country. We are the largest police state in the world. I suggest people watch the You-Tube video: Rockefeller Reveals 9/11 Fraud to Aaron Russo. I never knew as a child how stupid most Americans are because as a child I was born and raised outside of the city of New York. The truth is that people here are generally more on the ball. Now with the internet it is become increasingly obvious to me how the naivete of the country increases as you move away from the very few major metro areas like New York and Los Angeles. To someone from these cities, other places are very, very backward and are more likely to not know much about anything. They do not even know that we are controlled by a private corporation "The Federal Reserve". The government are nothing but the puppets of the likes of David or Nick Rockefeller. The Sophie Scholl story is true and there is a memorial to her, her brother and the resistence organization called "The White Rose". It is located in Munich. I see what is going on in this country to be no different that the incrementalism that occurred in Nazi Germany. Because I had relatives there, I know what it was like for the average German. God help you all as this expands here. People like James will be dazed when it eventually affects him and the people he knows.

James April 16, 2008 3:00 pm (Pacific time)

Wow Susan, that is a speacial brand of paranoia you have going there. I would love to crawl around inside your head for about an hour but I'm afraid I would need some serious counseling afterward!

Tim McFarland April 15, 2008 5:15 pm (Pacific time)

Thank you for this story. This makes me very sad.

Susan Tackitt April 15, 2008 3:21 pm (Pacific time)

It's coming to America soon. Read this... Odds are 98 to 2 that Free Speech will die quietly in 2008 Senate Bill 1959 to Criminalize Thoughts, Blogs, Books and Free Speech Across America www.newstarget.com by Mike Adams The end of Free Speech in America has arrived at our doorstep. It's a new law called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, and it is worded in a clever way that could allow the U.S. government to arrest and incarcerate any individual who speaks out against the Bush Administration, the war on Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security or any government agency (including the FDA). The law has already passed the House on a traitorous vote of 405 to 6, and it is now being considered in the Senate where a vote is imminent. All over the internet, intelligent people who care about freedom are speaking out against this extremely dangerous law: Philip Giraldi at the Huffington Post, Declan McCullagh at CNET's News.com, Kathryn Smith at OpEdNews.com, and of course Alex Jones at PrisonPlanet.com This bill is the beginning of the end of Free Speech in America. If it passes, all the information sources you know and trust could be shut down and their authors imprisoned. NewsTarget could be taken offline and I could be arrested as a "terrorist." Jeff Rense at www.Rense.com could be labeled a "terrorist" and arrested. Byron Richards, Len Horowitz, Paul Craig Roberts, Greg Palast, Ron Paul and even Al Gore could all be arrested, silenced and incarcerated. This is not an exaggeration. It is a literal reading of the law, which you can check yourself here: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/gpoxmlc110/h1955_rfs.xml The bill states: ‘...ideologically based violence’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs... Note that this means the "planned use of force to promote a political or social belief" would be considered an act of terrorism. This all hinges on the definition of "force," of course. Based on the loose use of logic in Washington these days, and the slippery interpretation of the meaning of words, "force" could mean: • A grassroots campaign to barrage Congress with faxes • A non-violent street protest • A letter-writing campaign that deluges the Senate with too much mail • A sit-in protest that blocks access to a business or organization • A grassroots e-mail campaign that overloads the e-mail servers of any government department or agency You get the idea. "Force" could be defined as practically anything. And since the "planned use of force" would be considered a criminal act of terrorism, anyone who simply thinks about a grassroots action campaign would be engaged in terrorist acts. If you stopped someone on the street and handed them a Bible, for example, this could be considered an act of terrorism ("...use of force to promote the individual's religious beliefs...") If you sent a barrage of angry letters to Washington about global warming and the destruction of the environment by the U.S. military, this could also be considered an act of terrorism ("...to promote the individual's political beliefs...") If you believe in same-sex marriage and you wrote a letter threatning a sit-in protest in front of your state's capitol building, this could also be considered an act of terrorism, even if you never carried it out! ("...planned use of force to promote a social belief...") The United States is on the fast track to fascism, and the Congress is working right alongside this nation's traitorous leaders to criminalize any thoughts, words or speeches that disagree with current government policies regarding war, terrorism, domestic surveillance and civil liberties. Simply speaking out against the war on Iraq could soon be labeled a crime. Merely thinking thoughts against the war on Iraq could be considered a criminal act. STOP S-1959 and HR-1955 (Or you may be a Terrorist)

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