Dharamsala, TIBET, 16.10.08 - Eight Tibetan Buddhist monks have been sentenced to life in prison or to long imprisonment for a bombing attack, without any victims, on March 23, against a government building in the city of Gyanbe, about 1,400 kilometers east of Lhasa. The monks, all from the Thangkya monastery (Tongxia in Chinese) near Gyanbe, in jail since April, were sentenced on September 23 - immediately after the end of the Paralympics, at the end of a secret trial. Not even their relatives were informed, although in general in China there is a great uproar over trials for such attacks.

The monks in Tibet began peaceful protests on March 10, which after four days erupted into clashes with the police and army, with killings and guerrilla combat. Since then, the area has been off-limits to the foreign media. Only a few areas have been reopened for tourism, and they are carefully watched. The Tibetan government in exile in Dharamsala (India) charges that China has arrested more than 1,000 people, and that there have been at least 140 deaths, while Beijing says there have been only 22 victims, mostly of Chinese ethnicity.