Tibetan tour guide detained on her journey to Lhasa

Tsering Tso, 39, was arbitrarily detained on 25 December last year under the charges of ”picking quarrels and provoking troubles” following three video clips she posted on social media, calling the police interrogation at Gongri Public Security Checkpoint of Drachen (Ch: Baqing) County in Nagchu City a violation of her privacy, and her attempt to make a phone call to the government hotline service.

In one of the videos posted on 19 December 2023, she said: “Take a look at this [Drachen County] police checkpoint. I came from Yushu to go to Lhasa. They [police] asked what I was going to do there. I told what I was going to do was my right to privacy. What right do you [police] have to know? They consistently infringe on our privacy as if we have no right to privacy. He [the police] also said that the other people have no problem [with the questions]. It is their business that they don’t understand the law. I understand the law. I want to make clear that going to Lhasa is my work.”

Official letter issued by the Yushu Public Security Bureau posted on 11 November 2023 by Tsering Tso on her WeChat.

Her detention comes only a month after she completed a 15-day administrative detention, from 26 October to 10 November 2023, in Yushu City. According to an official letter from the Yushu Public Security Bureau, shared on her WeChat account, the police claimed she posted over 17 comments from 8 to 25 October 2023 on Douyin – Chinese TikTok- criticizing the government and its staff, although content analysis by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) confirms them to be legitimate grievances and issues that the Yushu PSB has failed to address.

A former participant in the US State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, Tsering is known to have been detained five times: in 2017 and November 2020 reported by the International Campaign for Tibet and TCHRD, on 1 November 2022, detained for ten days by the Chengguan Branch of the Lhasa Public Security Bureau, and the aforementioned detentions. She hails from Trika (Ch: Guide) County, Tsolho Tibet Autonomous Prefecture, in Amdo, eastern Tibet.