Qüxü

— At the end of 2005, the UN’s then Special Rapporteur on Torture, Dr Manfred Nowak, became the first official international observer to visit Chushur Prison south-west of Lhasa following its opening in April, 2005. The prison, on the site of a detention facility that had been there since the 1960s, is in an area south-west of Lhasa in Chushur county, near Nyethang (Chinese: Niedang), off the road leading south from Lhasa towards Shigatse. While once a rural area, it is now much more built-up, like the rest of Lhasa. Dr Nowak noted that in this prison as well as others he visited in Lhasa there was: “a palpable level of fear and censorship”.