BEIJING, Feb 14 (AFP) - Five Tibetan monks have been sentenced to up to three years in prison in western China for publishing poems the authorities consider politically sensitive, a US-based broadcaster reported Monday.

Washington-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) said in a report monitored here that its Tibetan service had been told by people in the area that the five were arrested in Qinghai province in mid-January and sentenced last month.

They were from the Dakar Treldzong monastery in the Tsolho area of Qinghai and were jailed near the village of Xiling, where other Tibetans have been jailed for advocating greater autonomy for Tibet from Chinese rule.

Some of the poems praised the other jailed Tibetan monks, the locals said, and Chinese authorities alleged some contained tacit political messages.

A labour camp is known to exist in the area where the monks were imprisoned.

The jailed monks were identified as the monastery’s lead abbot, Tashi Gyaltsen, and Tsultrim Phelgyal, Tsesum Samten, Jhamphel Gyatso and Lobsang Thargyal, RFA said.

Tashi Gyaltsen was chief editor of a newsletter that the monastery began publishing in 1995 and in which the monks’ poems were published, it said.

Officials in the area could not be immediately contacted because of the Lunar New Year holiday which runs until Wednesday in China.