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Akong Tulku Rinpoche Wikimedia Commons

Men who killed influential British monk over 'money dispute' to be executed

Akong Tulku Rinpoche was found dead with multiple stab wounds at his home in 2013.

CHINA HAS SENTENCED two men to death for stabbing to death a British monk – who founded Europe’s first Tibetan monastery – over a financial dispute, state media said.

Akong Tulku Rinpoche, co-founder of Scotland’s Samye Ling monastery, was found dead with multiple stab wounds at his home in the southwestern city of Chengdu in 2013.

A court in the city sentenced two men, named in Chinese as Tudeng Gusang and Tsering Banjue, to death for the murders of Akong and two other men, while an accomplice was sentenced to three years in jail, the state-run China News Service reported yesterday evening.

It cited authorities as saying that Gusang, who had worked at the Scottish monastery, and Banjue had stabbed Akong, his nephew and a driver to death in a dispute over a 2.7 million yuan (€377,000) payment.

The verdict, posted by the court on social media, said the murders were “brutal” and that the suspects would be “treated severely in accordance with the law”.

Britain said in a statement that it communicated its opposition to the death penalty to Beijing.

Akong, who was in his early 70s, took British citizenship after fleeing Tibet in 1959, and founded the facility in rolling Scottish hills in 1967.

He had the title of Rinpoche, an honorific given to the most respected teachers in Tibetan Buddhism, and his monastery said at the time of his killing that he had been “assassinated”.

Pilgrimage site

The institution was a pilgrimage site for artists and musicians including Leonard Cohen as well as senior Tibetan monks including the Dalai Lama.

Despite fleeing China, Akong had maintained a relationship with authorities in Beijing, regularly returning to Tibetan regions.

Many Tibetans say that China represses their religious freedom and culture. Beijing says it has brought massive investment to the relatively undeveloped region.

Rights groups say China executes more people than the rest of the world combined, though the annual number sentenced to death has declined significantly over the past decade. Beijing regards the figure as a state secret and does not release it.

The British embassy in Beijing said it was aware of the outcome of the trial, adding: “The British government maintains its longstanding opposition to the death penalty, and has formally communicated this to the Chinese government.”

© AFP 2016

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    Mute ruairí
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    Feb 1st 2016, 2:30 PM

    Akong Rinpoche was a great, compassionate man. The last thing he’d want is for these men to be executed.

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    Mute Tadgh Smith
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    Feb 1st 2016, 3:12 PM

    I doubt it ruairi. “The last thing he would have wanted” would have been a stab vest, surely?

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    Mute ruairí
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    Feb 1st 2016, 3:19 PM

    Did you know him?

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    Mute ruairí
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    Feb 1st 2016, 3:21 PM

    Also, why would the last thing he want be a stab vest ?

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    Mute Alison Lopez
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    Feb 2nd 2016, 11:06 AM

    As a student of Rinpoches (worked with him and had the privilege of having him in our home) I find this comment offensive. Each time he went back to TAR (Tibetan Autonomous Region) to distribute funds raised in the West to the many projects he had set up to help his people, he knew he was a target and that his life was at risk, but helping his fellow Tibetans meant more to him. And he would not have wanted these men sentenced to death but rather to live out their karma in jail. This is what his family have also requested, not revenge and an opportunity for the Chinese government to use it as an example for political ends.

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    Mute Stephen murphy
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    Feb 2nd 2016, 9:28 PM

    How do we know, he wasn’t killed by the authorities and now they are covering it up with executions?

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    Mute Lad
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    Feb 1st 2016, 2:32 PM

    Meanwhile in Ireland that would be strike 1…

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    Mute HolidaysIreland
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    Feb 1st 2016, 3:00 PM

    There is a belief in Chengdu that he was killed by the Chinese and the other two will be shot for it.

    3 in one go.

    For those who are involved in promoting Tibetan culture but who are unknown in the west they usually just disappear one day and that is that.

    This has happened to people I know.

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    Mute Mark Ryan
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    Feb 1st 2016, 4:06 PM

    Any proof holidays?

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    Mute Oran Joyce
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    Feb 1st 2016, 7:17 PM

    Lived in Scotland for a while and often visited the temple to meditate.
    Wonderful place.
    Buddhists are lovely people. Very calm. Great sense of humour. Great cooks.
    Shocked when I heard of his death.

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    Mute Guybrush Threepwood
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    Feb 1st 2016, 7:38 PM

    Thanks for that. Keep us posted.

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    Mute Paul Fanshawe
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    Feb 1st 2016, 6:29 PM

    ” His monastery said at the time of his killing that he had been assassinated”.

    Just to once again draw attention to the lazy Journal practice of copying and pasting articles from AFP, without any local journalistic research, it should be pointed out that a senior monk of the Kagyu Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Ringu Tulku Rinpoche who was a freind of Akong Tulku Rinpoche, immediately withdrew his use of the word “assassinated”, saying that he had used it in error because of his incomplete familiarity with the term as used in English.

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