Kelsang Sonam was arrested and sentenced to ten and a half years in prison for ‘revealing state secrets’ in 2006. The ‘state secret’ that he revealed to the outside world was an appeal letter to the UN written by his friend Dolma Kyab while the latter was in prison.

Kelsang Sonam (pen name: Gang Pel), 34, hails from Arik Township of Dola County, Tsojang (Ch: Haibei) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province. He is the oldest of the four brothers in his family. At a very young age, he became a monk at Gaden Chopheling monastery in Arik, where he trained himself in Buddhist prayer rituals. Later he joined the nearby Kumbum and Rongwo monasteries, where he studied Tibetan grammar, poetry and so on. At Xining, he also studied, on the sides, English language.