Lhasa — While Chinese President Xi visiting Tibet, Gonpo Kyi, the sister of Dorjee Tashi, a Tibetan businessman and political prisoner, attempted suicide after being repeatedly denied the right to visit her brother and being detained and tortured as if she were a prisoner by the Chinese authorities. She was in critical condition after jumping from the second floor of a hotel. Tibetans are suffering under Xi's cruel leadership, just like these two siblings and many other Tibetans.
Gonpo Kyi was detained in a hotel in Lhasa on August 20, 2025, the same day that Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Lhasa, the Capital of Tibet. Her movements were restricted, and she was beaten and tortured in the hotel. Driven by despair and anger, Gonpo Kyi jumped from the second floor of the hotel in a desperate act of protest against the mistreatment she was enduring. She suffered severe injuries to her waist and limbs and was in critical condition. After the incident, Chinese police denied Gonpo Kyi access to a hospital and the necessary medical care.
According to a reliable source, Gonpo Kyi traveled to Lhasa on August 18, 2025, to meet with her brother, Dorjee Tashi, and his lawyer. However, her peaceful appeals were met with illegal and violent responses from the Chinese police. Chinese police officers in plain clothes dragged Gonpo Kyi through the streets, beating her and causing her serious injuries.
In five videos recorded from the hotel where she was forcibly detained between August 18 and 20, Gonpo Kyi exposed serious violations of her rights by the Chinese authorities. She stated: "I came to see my brother, which is my legal right under Chinese law. Instead, they have locked me up like a prisoner, denying me the chance to deliver letters or meet my brother and his lawyer. I am suffering from severe injuries to both my leg and waist, and it is undeniable that Dorjee was wrongfully imprisoned treated as if he were a criminal forced under a black cap."
Dorjee Tashi was a successful businessman who owned luxury hotels and real estate companies,Chinese police arrested him in July 2008, during large-scale protests by Tibetans in Tibet against the Chinese communist regime in Tibet and the Olympic Games held in China. He was accused of “secessionist "by the Chinese authorities. Although the political charges were later dropped. In 2010, after a closed-door trial at the Lhasa Intermediate People's Court, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on false charges of “loan fraud,” although the case was in fact politically motivated by the Chinese authorities.
Since his imprisonment, Dorjee Tashi's family has repeatedly and in multiple ways requested a legal review of the case. In 2020, the Chinese court rejected appeals filed by his lawyer and relatives to have his case reviewed. Between 2023 and 2024, Gonpo Kyi, accompanied by her husband Choekyong and her brother Dorjee Tseten, staged more than seven peaceful hunger strikes and prayer protests outside government offices and courts in Lhasa. Their actions were met with repeated detentions and violence by the Chinese authorities.
China-Tibet: The one-thing you need to know:
Over the past 70 decades, there has been ongoing political repression, social discrimination, economic marginalization, environmental destruction, and cultural assimilation, particularly due to Chinese migration to Tibet which is fueling intense resentment among the people of occupied Tibet.
The communist-totalitarian state of China began its invasion of Tibet in 1949, reaching complete occupation of the country in 1959. Since that time, more than 1.2 million people, 20% of the nation's population of six million, have died as a direct result of China's invasion and occupation. In addition, over 99% of Tibet's six thousand religious monasteries, temples, and shrines, have been looted or decimated resulting in the destruction of hundreds of thousands of sacred Buddhist scriptures.
Until 1949, Tibet was an independent Buddhist nation in the Himalayas which had little contact with the rest of the world. It existed as a rich cultural storehouse of the Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings of Buddhism. Religion was a unifying theme among the Tibetans -- as was their own language, literature, art, and world view developed by living at high altitudes, under harsh conditions, in a balance with their environment.
