HUNTINGTON BEACH : Group Lobbies for Jailed Monk’s Release

Lynn Loschin, 23, works for a property management company and lives in Huntington Beach.

Yulo Dawa Tsering, well into his 60s, is a Tibetan monk who lives in a Chinese prison.

They’ve never met.

Yet Loschin combed through 80 pages of research on the monk and over the last four months has written more than 20 letters to the Chinese government urging officials to release Tsering, who has been a prisoner since 1987. Tsering was arrested after he publicly supported Tibetan independence.

Loschin is the coordinator of Amnesty International’s Huntington Beach adoption group. She and the 15 or so other members have bombarded Tsering’s captors with more than 50 letters. The group hopes that the letters will keep pressure on the Chinese government and at the very least prevent more harm from coming to Tsering.

“He’s very committed to his ideals, religion, beliefs and also to his people who have been oppressed,” Loschin says of the monk.

Tsering, who has been in trouble with communist authorities for much of his life, was arrested five years ago after discussing the Dalai Lama and an autonomous Tibet at a private dinner party. Eventually, he was charged with “counterrevolutionary activities.”

The campaign has so far been unsuccessful in gaining Tsering’s release. But Loschin said the effort has brought her rewards of another sort. “It changed my life in the sense that it made me more aware and less selfish,” she said.

The Huntington Beach adoption group meets the second Thursday of each month at 7:30 p.m. at the Community Methodist Church, 6661 Heil Ave., Huntington Beach. The next meeting is scheduled for September 10, when Patricia McCabe, the Democratic candidate in the 45th congressional district, will speak.