Tibetan Film Director Hospitalised Following Abuse in Detention

By Tenzin Samten / July 6, 2016;

Pema Tseden

The Film Directors Guild of China has demanded more information about the mistreatment of the Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden who was hospitalised after his detention by Chinese police at the airport in Xining city, causing concern to Tibetans in Tibet and worldwide.

Pema Tseden, 45, was arrested at Xining airport on June 25. He was interrogated for one night and placed in a detention centre for five days. Police reportedly said that he was arrested for disturbing public order. It is understood that following his detention Tseden was hospitalised having sustained cuts and injuries to his hands.

The Film Directors Guild of China released a statement which read “We call on the related departments to quickly respond to society’s concerns and make the whole cause public, including the reason for the enforcement methods used by the police and whether their procedures were within the rules, whether there are questions of the use of violence or excessive enforcement”.

Film director Pema Tseden won the Golden Horse award for best adapted screenplay on Nov. 21, 2015. Photo: Epoch Times

Tseden with the Golden Horse award for best adapted screenplay, Nov 21, 2015.
Photo: Epoch Times

Sonam, a producer who works with him said that Tseden had returned to the baggage area to retrieve a forgotten bag and was challenged by airport staff who said he should not have re-entered the area. Police were called in to intervene and they ordered his detention for “disturbing social order.”

The security officers “grabbed him by the hair, handcuffed him behind his back and dragged him to the station,” said Sonam, adding that while in detention, Tseden suffered from high blood pressure, chest pain and headaches severe enough to cause hospitalisation.

The airport police have denied any wrongdoing saying that he had refused to “cooperate”.

Tseden’s films The Silent Holy Stones (2005); Old Dog (2011); The Sacred Arrows (2014) and Tharlo (2015) focused on preserving Tibetan culture. At the time of his arrest he was on his way to Qinghai province to promote his latest film, Tharlo, which is an adaptation of his novel and reflects upon changes in Tibet and the damage caused by attempts to modernise rural life. The Silent Holy Stones won him the Golden Rooster Award for Best Directorial debut while Tharlo won the Best Adapted Screenplay at the Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards.

Pema Tseden is the first director to make a film entirely in Tibetan. He studied film making at China’s most prestigious film school, the Beijing Film Academy. Before that he studied Tibetan language and literature at the Northwest University for Nationalities.