A first hand Account written by a former detainee reveals the horror that goes on in the name of ‘legal education’ inside the secretive walls of ‘re-education centres’ established by Chinese authorities in Tibet.

Written by a monk whose identity is kept anonymous for security reasons, the account validates anecdotal evidence collected by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) in recent years on the existence of such extralegal centres used to educate ‘politically unreliable’ Tibetans. For instance, Tibetan writer and teacher Gangkye Drupa Kyab was forced to attend 15-day re-education classes soon after his release from prison in 2016. Likewise another former political prisoner was re-educated for more than two months for defying an official order that forced monks and nuns to leave monastic institutions located in Tibetan areas outside Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).

The anonymous monk spent about four months in a re-education centre in Sog (Ch: Suo) County, Nagchu Prefecture, TAR. In his account, he refers to these centres as “transformation through education” (Chinese: jiaoyu zhuanhua/教育转化; Tibetan: lobso yosang teyney khang/ སློབ་གསོ་ཡོ་བསྲང་ལྟེ་གནས་ཁང་) training centres. All inmates at the re-education centre where he was imprisoned at the time were monks and nuns except for “two or three laypersons”. He was among many other monks and nuns forced to return home and abandon studies in monastic institutions located outside TAR in the past several years. The monk was pursuing his education in Tsongon (Ch: Qinghai) Province when he was ordered to return to Sog County or face severe consequences: