29 October 2007
Runggye Adak convicted
(RFA; CECC) A court in Sichuan province has convicted the Tibetan nomad Runggye Adak on charges of attempting to "subvert state power" and "split the country" by standing before a crowd gathered at Lithang horse-racing festival and shouting slogans calling for the Dalai Lama's return to Tibet and greater Tibetan freedoms. The judge presiding over the Ganzi (Tib: Kardze) Intermediate People's Court, located in Dartsedo (Chin: Kangding), the capital of Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, said that sentencing would take place within six or seven days. Runggye Adak is the only ethnic Tibetan known to have been convicted on the charge of "subversion" since the Criminal Law was amended in 1997 to replace the crime of "counterrevolution" with "endangering state security". He is the also the first Tibetan convicted under the new laws on charges of "subversion" as well as "splittism".