Tibetan Land-Grab Protester Missing, Presumed Detained

A Tibetan man living in western China’s Sichuan province has gone missing after being visited by local officials, presumably in connection with his role in protesting the seizure five years ago of community property by Chinese authorities, sources said.

Jigje Kyab, a resident of Thangkor town in Dzoege (in Chinese, Ruo’ergai) county in the Ngaba (Aba) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, vanished April 13 after “a team of county officials and employees” came to his house in the morning, a local source told RFA’s Tibetan Service.

“When neighbors came to check on him in the afternoon, he was found to be missing from the area,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“He was taken away without any notice given to his relatives,” he said.

Worried family members later approached a Dzoege county official named Tashi for information, but he denied that Kyab had been detained, he said.

'Misuse of authority'

Jigje, 39 and also known as Jigme, had been the custodian of documents supporting Tibetan claims to property seized five years ago in a land-grab by Chinese authorities, the source said.

“Tibetans living in Thangkor town’s Karuma village believe that local authorities took this action to retaliate for their taking the land-grab issue to higher authorities at the provincial level,” he said.

“This was a misuse of their authority,” he said.

Kyab’s disappearance is believed to have been linked to his role in helping lead a Jan. 28 protest by 20 Thangkor-area Tibetans in Sichuan’s provincial capital Chengdu, RFA’s source said.

“All the protesters were taken back to Thangkor town, but Jigje and a colleague named Tsepak were detained for a long time before being released,” he said.

The requisitioning of rural land for lucrative property deals by cash-hungry local governments triggers thousands of “mass incidents” across China every year.

Many result in violent suppression, the detention of the main organizers, and intense pressure on the local population to comply with the government’s wishes.

Reported by Lhuboom for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney.