Nuns recount prison torture experiences in Tibet

Last Thursday, two Tibetan Buddhist nuns, Chuye Kunsang and Passang Lhamo, gave an hourlong lecture at PSU on their experiences of torture and abuse at the hands of Chinese authorities while being held as prisoners of conscience in their native Tibet.

The event, sponsored by both the PSU and local Group 48 chapters of Amnesty International as well as the Northwest Tibetan Cultural Association, drew a crowd of over 150 people in Smith Center 328-329.

The evening began with the president of the Northwest Tibetan Cultural Association, Jigme Topgyal, giving a dedication to the nuns in Tibetan, which was followed by an introduction by Joanne Lau, the China Regional Action Network Coordinator of Amnesty Group 48.

Lau gave a brief history of the events that led to China’s current occupation of Tibet, which began with their 1949 invasion of the area. Two years later, in 1951, Tibet was made an autonomous region under Chinese sovereignty. After the uprising that began in 1959 came twenty years of oppression with over 6 million Tibetans killed and thousands of religious artifacts and sites destroyed, which continues today.

Drapchi Prison is one of the largest prisons in China holding prisoners of conscience, who can be defined as those imprisoned solely for their race, religion or non-violent political beliefs. Drapchi is now infamous for its poor working conditions and inadequate medical care. Severe beatings and torture with electric batons are used as enforcement of the rules. Female prisoners suffered constant acts of rape and public degradation at the hands of male guards.

Speaking through an interpreter, Kunsang began by explaining her training to become a nun starting at 16 years of age, where a great deal of time was spent renovating the damage caused by the Chinese starting in the ’50s.

She talked about the lack of religious freedom in Tibet, which is exemplified by the mandatory political education imposed by Chinese authorities that sought to have Tibetans denounce their loyalty to the Dalai Lama, their religious and spiritual leader.

Kunsang also added that Tibetans have no freedom of speech, and are persecuted and oppressed for their views, even for peaceful protests.

On February 25, 1995, Kunsang was participating in such a protest in central Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. She felt a need to “speak for all Tibetans” and began to shout slogans with a group of other nuns in support of human and religious freedom. But after a few minutes, police arrived on the scene and all the protesters were arrested, had rags stuffed in their mouths and were taken to a detention center.

At the center, Kunsang was beaten every day and tortured with electric batons as guards attempted to have her admit, “Tibet had always been a part of China, and that we were wrong.”

But Kunsang said that they would never give into their demands, even as they received no fair trial in court and no legal representation, which resulted in a four-year sentence for participating in a non-violent protest.

In the months that Kunsang was held at the detention center, she received no proper food or bedding, no family visits and remarked “lots of blood was extracted from the prisoners as a way to take back food that was fed to them, leaving them weak and dizzy.” In July, she was then finally transferred to Drapchi with about 60 or so prisoners.

There, the prisoners were forced to grow out their hair and could not speak of religion. Military style drills were conducted, with objects placed on the heads of prisoners while standing in formation, and if the objects dropped, they were beaten and told that they “did not have enough effort.” In the wintertime, the prisoners were also often forced to stand motionless on cold water under their feet and as they collapsed, were yelled at for being lazy and were stamped upon by the guards.

Kunsang and others were subject to continual torture sessions that sought the denouncement of their beliefs and acceptance of Chinese propaganda, even with the offer of shortened sentences if they complied. But as she noted throughout her speech, “no one gave in,” even as they were beaten with batons, belt buckles, and various other instruments, leaving them barely able to walk at the end.

On May 1 and 4 of 1998, the prisoners protested against the Chinese flag-raising ceremonies that took place inside Drapchi by shouting slogans rejecting the Chinese flag on Tibetan soil and supporting the Dalai Lama. This resulted in severe beatings that involved the activation of the military and nine deaths, “leaving the courtyard almost completely covered in blood.”

Prison officials never accepted responsibility for any of the events, however, telling the families of the dead that the prisoners had committed suicide, and that they couldn’t claim the bodies. The surviving prisoners who had participated in the protest were then put in solitary confinement with no sunlight, and were not allowed to leave their cells, even for their manual labor.

According to Kunsang, all political prisoners were accused of feigning illness and denied medical attention, unless on the brink of death. Prison officials did not want deaths to occur inside the prison. Often prisoners were released to their families to avoid this, only to die a few days later. As a result of the harsh treatment inside the prison, many prisoners are bedridden for the rest of their lives, or like Kunsang and Lhamo, still have a poorer state of health and other internal injuries not immediately noticeable.

Lhamo was detained at 19 years of age in May 1994 and released in May 1999, and had experiences similar to Kunsang, with whom she decided to flee Tibet in April 2000 after losing all political rights in that country. Both were told never to speak of their experiences, were expelled from their nunnery, and placed under constant surveillance. Currently, they both live in Northern India, where a community of exiles is attempting to preserve Tibetan culture, even as schools and other institutions in their native land are being wiped out by the Chinese occupation.

To conclude the session, Kunsang and Lhamo took some questions from the audience and reiterated that they still believed in peace and that they did not have vengeance or anger towards their abusers. They also mentioned that although here in the United States we often take free speech for granted, they hoped for continued support to improve human rights in China by campaigning with groups such as Amnesty International to pressure governments on the issue.