Defiant Tibetan Dissident Free After 19 Years

Tibet's longest serving dissident prisoner has been released on "health grounds" in Lhasa after two decades of stubborn refusal to renounce his pro-independence ideals.

The 76-year-old Jigme Zangpo, whose sentence was twice extended as a result of prison protests, is staying with a relative in Lhasa after leaving its notorious Drapchi prison last weekend, nine years early.

Last night a spokesman for the exiled Dalai Lama described him as one of the most "influential Tibetan political prisoners to have been released in recent years".

He is the second high-profile Tibetan prisoner to be freed this year. He had not been due for release until 2011.

Earlier this year, in the run-up to the February summit between President George Bush and the Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, the authorities ordered the early release of a Tibetan ethnomusicologist, Ngawang Choephel, who was serving a sentence for espionage.

Jamyang Dorjee, the secretary of Tibet's spiritual leader, said in New Delhi that Jigme Zangpo's release showed that "it is only through international pressure that China responds".

Beijing has been willing for some time to let him travel abroad for medical treatment, according to the London-based Tibet Information Network. However, he has insisted that he should have the option of staying in Tibet.

His 15-year sentence in 1983 for "spreading and inciting counter-revolutionary propaganda" was extended by five years after he allegedly "shouted reactionary slogans" in prison.

In 1991 it was extended by another eight years after he attracted outside attention by shouting "Free Tibet" during a guided tour of the prison by the Swiss ambassador to China. Such visits are carefully stage-managed and prisoners are expected to remain silent.

Opponents of Chinese rule claim that he was severely beaten in 1998 after being involved in further prison protests.

As is customary in China, no independent reporting of his trial was allowed and no communication with him in prison was possible. What little information is available suggests that he is a man of remarkable persistence.

The official sentencing document in 1983 said that he had previously served jail terms for "counter-revolutionary crimes". He is believed to have been almost continuously in prison since the early 1960s.

He was found guilty in 1983 of allegedly "pasting a personally written poster on a wall in the southern part of the Jokhang temple". Three days later he "wore a white banner over his body... and raised many reactionary slogans".

Even after his detention, the document claims, he continued to call for Tibetan independence and "sang the Tibetan national anthem". The anthem calls for "a new golden age of happiness and bliss" throughout Tibet, and urges peace throughout the world.

According to the Chinese account, the poster Jigme Zangpo put up called for "violent struggle" - something that is not in keeping with his known beliefs. Nor would such a call have been pasted on the wall of the most sacred temple in Lhasa.

A fellow inmate who has since been released says that Jigme Zangpo consistently urged his comrades not to take part in violent action during their prison protests.