26 February 2026
A Tibetan monk in his twenties from Kirti monastery has finally been released from Mianyang prison after five years. Trinley, who was pursuing advanced religious studies, had been accused of distributing written materials including teachings of the Dalai Lama. He underwent prolonged detention and interrogation without due process, including before his most recent prison term, and with no explanation of his whereabouts to his family.
Trinley, from the village of Meruma (Mai’erma) in Ngaba (Chinese: Aba), Sichuan (the Tibetan area of Amdo) was released before the end of a five-year jail term, but is being kept under close surveillance and has not been allowed to return to his monastery.
Several months before Trinley’s release, his father passed away from illness. Ngaba County police had only informed the father of his son’s sentencing two months after his sudden disappearance. Trinley was arrested on 1 July 2021 amid official ceremonies across the PRC, including in Tibet, to celebrate the centenary anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.
Trinley’s family had endured extreme distress even before his sentencing in 2021. The county police had taken Trinley into custody several times, accusing him of publishing, distributing teachings and writings of the Dalai Lama. Each time, he had been interrogated and detained for several months in different police stations and detention centres in Ngaba county. He had also been deprived of his official identity and travel cards.
After his last arrest, a handwritten note was found on a bookshelf at his residence in Kirti Monastery that read “Although Tsenpo has departed in the sky, his decree will never be violated” (བཙན་པོ་དགུང་དུ་གཤེགས་གྱུར་ཀྱང་། དེ་ཡི་བཀའ་ལ་འགལ་མི་བྱ།). ‘Tsenpo’, meaning ‘emperor’ in Tibetan, is often used by Tibetans to refer to the spirit and strength of Tibetan identity being indomitable like the Tibetan empire.
In 2023, a Tibetan singer called Palden was detained and interrogated after performing the song ‘Messenger of [Tibetan] empire’ (བཙན་པོའི་ཕོ་ཉ།) online in December 2022. Following a secret trial in Golok (Chinese: Guoluo) in Amdo – that was unusually quick compared to time taken for the court trials of other detained prisoners in the past – Palden was held incommunicado for three years in prison.
Kirti Monastery, in Ngaba, eastern Tibet, where Trinley was studying, is one of the most influential Gelug centres on the plateau, renowned for its monastic scholarship, teaching lineage and wide regional influence across Amdo. It became a focal point of international attention in 2009 when a wave of Tibetan self-immolations began there, marking a tragic and unprecedented form of protest that underscored the depth of political and religious repression in the region.
