Taipei [Taiwan], April 10 (ANI): Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday called upon the Vietnamese government to investigate the death of a senior Tibetan lama, Humkar Dorje Rinpoche, in Ho Chi Minh City on March 29, 2025, under suspicious circumstances, as per a press release by the HRW.

According to the release, Humkar Dorje, 56, died following months of concern by the Tibetan community about his whereabouts and well-being. His followers in India, where many Tibetans live in exile, allege that Vietnamese and Chinese authorities had arrested him in Vietnam after he fled Tibet. His monastery, which is under official supervision, instead claimed that he died from illness while on a retreat.

'Humkar Dorje Rinpoche's death in Vietnam is especially concerning given the Chinese government's severe repression of Tibetans and its record of snatching its nationals in Vietnam,' said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch.

'The Vietnamese authorities should credibly and impartially investigate these claims and take appropriate action, including by providing autopsy findings to Humkar Dorje's family,' Wang added.

Humkar Dorje was head of the Lung Ngon monastery in Gabde county in the Golok Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai province. He had thousands of devotees inside China and abroad, including in Vietnam. He was a prominent educator, having founded, with official permission and oversight, a vocational school and more than 10 other schools in the region, where he sponsored the education of local children.

Humkar Dorje's disappearance and death occurred amid a Chinese government crackdown on prominent Tibetan educators and the schools that they run, which promote Tibetan language and culture, in eastern Tibetan areas including Golok.

Humkar Dorje had been missing since at least November 2024, according to Tibetan exile media. When people in Gabde county expressed concern about him in December, local authorities reportedly banned all discussion of the issue in public. The silence ended on April 1 when officials in Gabde county showed representatives of the monastery a death certificate issued by a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.

On April 3, senior monks at Lung Ngon monastery issued a public statement stating that Humkar Dorje had 'exhibited signs of ill health', had 'departed alone to an unknown place' at an unspecified date for a religious retreat, and had 'suddenly died of illness' in Vietnam on March 29, without giving further details.

On April 5, his followers in India contradicted these claims and said that the high lama had been in Vietnam following a Chinese police interrogation in Tibet late last year. They said Vietnamese police, allegedly acting in concert with operatives of China's Ministry of State Security, had detained him on March 25. He died four days later.

The monastery's statement is incomplete and may have been written under some form of duress, Human Rights Watch said, given the Chinese authorities' tight control over the management of Tibetan monasteries.

Tibetan lamas often go into retreat for extended periods, but it appears highly unlikely that senior monks at their monastery would be unaware of the lama's location, conceal the information for several months, or be unaware that he had travelled abroad. In addition, if the lama had gone into retreat or had been suffering from illness, the authorities would have no need to ban discussion of his situation.

Humkar Dorje's followers in India said that he fled his monastery in late September after government officials and local security questioned him in Gabde. An official Chinese media report shows a top county-level official visiting Lung Ngon monastery on October 15 to 'inspect temple management'.Uncharacteristically, the report makes no mention of Humkar Dorje by name.

Humkar Dorje had apparently long been in good standing with the authorities. He graduated in 2001 from China's national-level college for Tibetan Buddhist lamas and held a prestigious position in the county-level People's Congress, where he was a deputy head of the congressional standing committee. He was also president of Gabde County's branch of the China Buddhism Association, making him the most senior religious figure in the county.

In July 2024, he conducted a major public religious ceremony at Lung Ngon monastery, which would have required official permission. Official media reports in August showed him as one of the leaders of a government-run delegation visiting another local monastery. In September, official media showed a national-level official and members of a provincial delegation sharing a meal with Humkar Dorje at his monastery, stating that 'the various works carried out by Longen [Lung Ngon] Temple in recent years have been fully affirmed by departments at all levels of the province, prefecture and county.'

Official reports of Humkar Dorje's appearances ended by late September, which coincided with the time when his followers in India said he had fled to Vietnam.

Chinese authorities have long engaged in transnational repression--human rights abuses committed beyond a country's borders to curtail dissent, including against Tibetans living abroad, targeting those critical of the Chinese government or taking part in activities deemed threatening to the government.

Unconfirmed reports by other followers of Humkar Dorje said that some Lung Ngon monastery members who were in Vietnam with him may have been detained at the same time and may be handed over by the Vietnamese authorities to China despite the severe risk of torture and other mistreatment.

The Vietnamese government is obligated to respect the international law principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits countries from returning anyone to a place where they would face a real risk of persecution.

The Chinese government is known to have arrested and repatriated at least two political dissidents from Vietnam with the cooperation of the Vietnamese authorities: Dong Guangping in 2022 and Wang Bingzhang in 2002.

Consistent with the Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death, the Vietnamese government should conduct an impartial investigation into the circumstances of Humkar Dorje's death, including the role of its security services and any involvement of Chinese security personnel or officials. This inquiry should include an autopsy to establish the causes of death, which should be provided to the family along with the body being returned to them. The Minnesota Protocol provides that '[in] cases of potentially unlawful death, families have the right, at a minimum, to information about the circumstances, location and condition of the remains and, insofar as it has been determined, the cause and manner of death.'

'Foreign governments should press the Vietnamese government for answers on Humkar Dorje Rinpoche's death,' Wang said. 'They should hold Vietnamese officials accountable for complicity in China's abusive practices in Vietnam and take measures to prevent their recurrence.' (ANI)