Selections
from
The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk: Palden Gyatso
Translated
from Tibetan by Tsering Shakya
Grove Press, New York, 1997.
1958
“That afternoon a lone figure walked up the path to the monastery.
He brought a message indicating that the people of Lhasa had taken over
the Chinese military camp. The
messenger added that the monks should remain in the monastery.
But it did not take us long to realize that the messenger was a spy sent
by the Chinese. I learned, later,
in prison, that other monasteries had received similar messages.
We knew that the Chinese would attack the monastery.
It was only a matter of time. We
could see that the Chinese camp less than a mile below Drepung was being
reinforced. We could see a line of
trucks. Monks began to flee up the
mountain behind the monastery. I
didn’t know what to do. I tried
to get some sleep in my shag but could not rest because of the constant
firing of guns. In the morning this
gave way to noise of the shelling in Lhasa.
Everywhere I went monks were getting ready to escape or were already on
their way. Most of the monks
had fled during the night. Only two
other monks from Gadong were still in the monastery.
The three of us hurried to Gyen Rigzin Tempa’s shag.
I still regarded Gyen as my mentor.
All the monks from Gadong held him in special esteem.
Normally he would have spent the winter in Gadong, but this year he had
been invited to Lhasa to attend the Dalai Lama’s graduation ceremony.
He was seventy-two and quite frail.
“Are you still here?” Gyen asked, with a smile.
We told him that most of the monks had already fled the monastery. He nodded his head, saying, “Bad times are on the way.”
We asked Gyen to come with us to Gadong.
He told us that he was too old, that he would be a burden to us, but we
persuaded him that he should at least move to a place of retreat in the
mountains behind Drepung. I picked
up some tsampa from my shag and Gyen told me to pack some of his
books. That was all I took with me
on the path leading up the mountain from the monastery, with the sound of the
shelling in Lhasa behind us and the traffic of monks and villagers alongside us
on the path, all of us hurrying away.
By now Drepung was completely cut off from Lhasa.
Chinese soldiers guarded the paths leading to the monastery.
Farmers from the villages below had moved into the monastery buildings
with their animals. The path up the
mountain was filled with monks and farmers and children shooing their family’s
cattle. Gyen was having trouble
breathing and his heart was beating erratically. Every few minutes we would have to stop and rest.
We reached the top of the pass some time after sunset and spent the night
in a cave.
The next morning we were woken by another, louder explosion.
The Chinese were shelling the monastery.
We stood there watching the shells land on the monastic compounds.
I looked at Gyen and saw he was crying.
Smoke and dust rose in billows every time a shell landed on the khamtsen
and courtyards and temples. But we
could no longer linger. Gyen could
no longer walk and the three of us took it in turns to carry him on our backs.
Images of the ruins of the Drepung Monastery
In a few days we came to a monastery called Chimcha Ling, which was used
as a retreat center by the monks of Drepung.
The abbot, a former student of Gyen Rigzin Tenpa, welcomed us warmly.
We heard that the Chinese had entered Drepung and arrested all the monks
they found there. They were being
held in the assembly hall with their hands tied behind their backs.
I knew we had to press on to Gadong.
We would find our way by the landmarks of mountain peaks.”
Following the Lhasa Uprising, Pages 52-53
1960
“A soldier took me to a small room which had belonged to a monk but was
now being used solely for the purpose of interrogation.
It was bare but for three wooden stools and a high wooden box which
served as a table. Folded papers
had been placed under one side of the box so that it sat level on the uneven
stone floor. Two guards stood at
the door. The officer introduced
himself as Liao. His face and lips
were dry and chapped – that signature, again, of the Himalayan wind.
There were wide gaps between his teeth.
He smoked cigarette after cigarette, lighting one from the embers of
another. Gyaltsen, the officer’s
Tibetan interpreter, sat on one of the rickety stools, waiting for instructions.
Liao’s manner was severe and indignant; he spoke in a kind of bark.
“You have concealed your identity for a long time,” he said.
“You had ample opportunity to confess your crimes.
Our party workers have been extremely lenient.
Still you have chosen to hide your crimes from them.
This is very serious. And
now I learn that you opposed the motherland and took part in the Lhasa
demonstrations.”
He paused to suck on his cigarette.
“The Communist Party will be lenient so long as you admit to your
errors. The Party will ignore your
– misjudgments.”
Liao took out another cigarette. The
he pointed at the photograph lying on the makeshift table.
“This we cannot forget,” he said.
He wanted to know everything about Gyen, every detail of my relationship
with him. I told him all that I knew about my teacher’s background.
This was common knowledge at Drepung.
Liao was unimpressed.
“We know that your teacher was spying for the Indian government,” he
said angrily.
I protested that Gyen did not have the slightest interest in politics.
But the Chinese had already made up their minds:
Gyen Rigzin Tenpa was a spy.
“You have to acknowledge that your teacher was a spy,” Liao insisted.
But I was resolute. I
refused to make the false allegation the Chinese were attempting to draw from
me. Several hours passed.
Liao became irritated by my persistence.
Then he said something that I would later recognize as a standard
caution. I would hear it many times
during my imprisonment. Liao’s
voice was suddenly gentle and I could hear the translator take on that tone like
some secret passed from one man to another.
“Do you know the Party policy?” he asked.
“No,” I replied.
Liao stressed that the Party’s policy was lenience:
they would be willing to forget my crimes if only I confessed to them.
But if I resisted, he said, then the Party would “fight back”.
I said once more that Gyen Rigzin Tenpa was not a spy.
Laio’s voice sharpened. He
insisted that Gyen Rigzin Tenpa was a spy.
“You can say what you like,” I said.
Before I could breathe in, Liao’s open palm had caught me on the side of the face,
knocking me backwards. The tow
guards who had been standing by the door came forward and grabbed my arms.
I saw the interpreter, Gyaltsen, step back.
He looked frightened. The
guards began to kick me.
“Do you confess?” asked Liao. “Do
you?”
“Do whatever you want with me!” I shouted.
I was enraged. I’d lost my
senses.
The guards held my arms behind my back, tied them with a rope, then threw
the end of the rope over a wooden beam. They
pulled down on the rope, hoisting my arms up, wrenching them from their sockets.
I screamed. I began to urinate uncontrollably. And I could no longer hear anything beyond my own screaming
and the thuds of the guards’ fists landing on my body.
After a while a guard untied the rope and before I could think straight
Liao began to question me again. He
wanted to know if I was ready to confess. I
said that I had nothing to add to what I’d said earlier.
Liao signaled to the guards. They
put me in handcuffs and shackled my feet together with a chain. “Think carefully,” said Liao, looking me straight in the
eyes. “Confess.”’
Pages 67-69
1962
“We arrived at Norbukhingtse at sunset and the prison seemed
very peaceful in the evening light. The
main gate creaked as the guards pushed it open and that sound was enough for the
other prisoners to know that we had returned.
The prisoners were assembled in the courtyard to watch as the guards went
through the formalities of handing us over. Warders paced back and forth.
But for their footsteps, the prison was silent.
One of the guards ordered us to bow, so we lowered our heads.
Then the prisoners began to shout, “Down with the reactionaries! Down
with the reactionaries!” We had
heard this before, but not the slogan that followed.
“Log chodpa tsa-med tong,” the prisoners cried.
They were calling for the execution of the reactionaries.
The noise subsided and a prisoner I knew called Yamphel took a few steps
towards us. He was a good man, much
respected by the other prisoners, but it became apparent that he had been
instructed to carry out a thamzing or “struggle session”.
He made the obligatory denunciation about reactionaries betraying “the
kindness of the Party”, shaking and stumbling over his words as he did so.
Then another prisoner stepped forward, one of the very few prisoners with
a beard. He too made a rousing
denunciation of reactionaries. He
raised his fist, leaned close to us and said, “Your time is up on this
earth.” I was shaken by what he
said, afraid that now the Chinese would be able to say that fellow prisoners had
demanded our execution.
That night we were kept outside, with no bedding or blankets to protect
us from the extreme cold. My body
ached. The sharp cold steel of the cuffs bit deep into my wrists and
ankles. I tried to tuck my sleeves
and my trousers between the steel and my sin by they slipped on straight away.
We were too exhausted to struggle against the hunger and the cold and at
some point I fell asleep. I was
woken by the warmth of the sun on my face.”
After attempted escape from prison, December
1962, Pages 91-92
1963
A major tactic used by the Party under Mao was that
of the thamzing; translated as ‘struggle sessions’, thamzing were
essentially violent emotional and physical attacks on so-called reactionaries,
or counter-revolutionaries. After
Palden Gyatso was arrested for his attempted escape from prison he underwent his
first thamzing. The prison guards,
interpreters and other prisoners first denounced him and his cohorts with whom
he attempted escape. They were
called “reactionaries who had betrayed the mother land and opposed the
people.” The 2,000 Tibetan
prisoners shouted “Eradicate reactionaries!
Eradicate reactionaries!” After
the shouting subsided, prisoners singly interrogated the group, asking why they
had tried to escape, why they wanted to betray the motherland. Palden took this opportunity to “discredit the Chinese and
show my independence.” He gave a
list of grievances that included the mass starvation of prisoners.
Drawings of Thamzing sessions
The Chinese guards then called another prisoner
forward. He repeated the inquiry
about why the prisoners would want to escape.
Palden answered with: “I escaped because I feared I would die of
starvation.” The prisoner
promptly hit him, then pushed Palden to the ground and said “The earth is the
Party and the blue sky is the people, and between the earth and the sky there is
no escape for you.” This prisoner
repeated his actions to the rest of the prisoners who had attempted escape.
At this point the thamzing came to an end.
After the session the prisoners were labeled as
“big guilty” and their sentences were extended, in Palden’s case, by more
than his original sentence was total – he was now sentenced to fifteen
consecutive years in prison.
Pages,
97-98
1967
In 1966 Palden was subjected to an especially long and brutal thamzing
within his prison cell:
“’Palden
is thoroughly reformed and thinks he should be released!
Isn’t that right?’” “I knew he was provoking me and that it was
best that I should keep quiet. But the cell leader was relentless and I realized there was
no escape for me. He was determined
to force me to say something he could report as ‘anti-Party’.
Eventually he made a note that I had refused to confess and that I was
arrogant because I believed I was a reformed person.
The next day, two prison guards stationed themselves
outside of the dormitory in which Palden was kept: “the younger one walked the length of the cell and stood at
the far end. I had a feeling they
were here for me. The cell
leader’s note had been sent to the office.
The other prisoners sat in silence, while the older guard approached me
with his arms folded. “Some
prisoners think they have become citizens of the new society,” he said.
“But guilty, reactionary prisoners cannot change overnight.
They are like stones wrapped in cotton wool:
soft on the outside but hard underneath.”
He turned and addressed me directly: “Palden, do you think we would let
you out?” I did not answer. The guard smiled faintly then said, “Those who refuse to
confess are showing contempt towards socialism.”
“Suddenly he raised his voice, commanding me to
stand in the middle of the room. He
scolded me as if I were a child. “There
is only one road left for you!” he shouted.
He nodded to the cell leader, who raised his fist and shouted,
“Eliminate reactionaries!” The
other prisoners joined him like a chorus. The
guard and the cell leader began to beat me.
I cupped my hands in front of my face to protect myself.
The beating seemed to go on for ever, but it could not have lasted for
more than twenty minutes. After the guards had left, I crawled into bed and slept in
spite of the pain. When I woke, I
peeled off my shirt to inspect the bruises all over my shoulders and ribs.
When I walked unsteadily to the latrine, the other prisoners bruised
themselves with this and that, so as to avoid meeting my eyes.”
Pages 129-130
1968
In the spring of 1968, Palden was subjected to another brutal thamzing as
a result of his “reactionary” behavior.
In truth, a fellow prisoner denounced him during one of the reeducation
meetings in which prisoners were expected to report the smallest infractions
toward their socialist reform. The
prisoners were forced to denounce themselves and each other and they learned how
to turn the smallest gesture into a ritual practiced by the old feudal system
and therefore opposing socialism and personal reform.
“I stood up and walked to the middle of the room.
The officer demanded my confession.
He accused me of “firing missiles wrapped in wool”.”
“’Confess! Confess!’
he shouted. Some prisoners would
have been so shaken that they blurted out their innermost secrets.
I knew that I had to stay calm and keep quiet, waiting for the officer to
reveal the nature of the charge. The
soldiers were angered by my silence.
The officer ordered the cell leader and another prisoner to take
hold of my hands.”
“They pushed me down by the neck and began to twist my arms behind my
back. “Bow your head!” the officer shouted.
“You insolent reactionary!” A
chorus of “Confess! Confess!”
rose up from the prisoners around me. But
still I kept silent. Two more
people came into the cell, a prisoner and a guard.
The cell leader pulled me up by the hair.
He pointed to the prisoner who had just come in and asked me, “Do you
recognize him?”
Palden recognized the prisoner as a member of his brigade that worked in
the brick factory, his name was Rigzin. Rigzin
had told the guards that he had seen Palden make a traditional water offering to
the gods – a common practice before the Chinese occupation and something that
was considered a feudal tradition. Palden
had, in fact, been washing his face in the stream and splashed some water, but
to avoid trouble, Rigzin had embellished the story.
All prisoners did this and Palden was not angry with Rigzin.
“The officer immediately ordered the other prisoners to subject me to a
thamzing. My fellow
prisoners rushed forwards and started to punch me on the back and sides.
Some of them kicked me too. The
cell leader wound an old, thick rope around my body, pinning my arms to my
sides. I couldn’t move.
Blow after blow landed on my chest and arms and shoulders and on my ribs.
The prisoners knew that if they didn’t hit me hard they would
themselves be guilty of hesitancy in support of socialism.
I could not even raise my hands to protect my head.”
“I had watched prisoners die during a thamzing.
An old, gentle man called Sholkhang Yonten, the thirteenth Dalai Lama’s
scribe, had refused to condemn His Holiness and was subjected to a beating.
He fell unconscious and died on his way to the hospital.”
“I would have welcomed a quick death.
I told the guards to kill me. They
were shocked by my audacity and replied with a blow to the side of the head and
a kick in the ribs.”
“When the beating eventually came to an end the guards were panting
like dogs. There was a stench of
sweat. I fell to the floor.
The cell leader untied the rope and with the rope gone I was able to
breathe normally. As the guards
were leaving the room, the officer looked back at me and said, ‘Don’t think
your case is finished. We’ll go
on investigating until you confess to your crime.’”
Palden’s thamzing lasted for thirteen days.
Every day when the prisoners returned from work he was denounced and
beaten by the Chinese officers and his fellow prisoners.
Pages 133-136
1983
Palden was finally released from prison in 1983 and allowed to move back
to Drepung monastery. He was given
a room and allowed to continue his religious studies in a limited fashion.
Not long after his release, Palden was again arrested.
A group of about twenty policemen and officers stormed his room in the
middle of the night.
“The Chinese officer took a piece of paper from his pocket and read
from it in Chinese. The Tibetan interpreter then translated: “By order of
judge Thupten Tsundro of the High Court in Lhasa, we have come to arrest you.”
No charges were mentioned. The
police told me to stand up and, as I did, so everyone else in the room had to
shuffle backwards to make space for me. A
policeman placed my wrists in handcuffs, a brand new style made of light steel
that glistened in the dim light of the room, and I felt once again the cold
rings of metal against my skin.”
The officers then searched his room for evidence.
They found religious texts and tracing paper with slogans he had used for
poster fell out of the books. They
also found a Tibetan flag and some writings by the Dalai Lama in a thermos. This was the evidence that the Chinese used to arrest Palden
again and he went back to jail.
Pages
176-178
1989
After his arrest and a short, predetermined trial, Palden was sentenced to eight years in prison and eventually sent back to Drapchi prison in 1989, Palden had spent 11 years of his previous sentences at Drapchi.
Drapchi Prison
“Paljor was pretending to read my case file, but as soon as I came in
he put the file down on the table, stood up and walked towards me, shouting,
“Rascal!” This was followed by
a stream of abuse. I had no idea
what was going to happen. The
interrogation room reminded me of the shrine rooms dedicated to wrathful
deities. An array of batons hung
on the wall. A bunch of shining
steel handcuffs dangled from a hook. Paljor
took down a long baton and walked around me, waving it in the air.”
“… Paljor did not wait for an answer.
He pulled the electric baton from the socket and began to poke at me with
this new toy. My whole body
flinched at each electric shock. Then,
shouting obscenities, he thrust the baton into my mouth, took it out, then
rammed it in again. Paljor went
back to the wall and selected a longer baton.
I felt as though my body were being torn apart.
I remember dimly that one of the guards put his fingers in my mouth to
pull out my tongue and prevent me from choking.
And I remember too that one of the Chinese guards ran out of the room in
disgust.”
I can remember as if it were yesterday the way the shocks made my body
vibrate. The shock seemed to hold you in its grip, like a furious
shiver. I passed out and when I
worked I found myself lying in a pool of vomit and urine. I had no idea
how long I had been there. My mouth
was swollen and I could hardly move my jaw.
With great pain, I spat something out.
It was three of my own teeth. It
would be several weeks before I could eat solid food again. In due course, all my other teeth fell out too.”
Pages 194-196
Palden demonstrating how the electric baton was used.
-Dharamsala, 1996.
1989-1990
“It was
in Drapchi that I met Yulu Dawa Tsering, a gentle, cautious
man and a great listener. Yulu, one
of the renowned incarnate lamas from Ganden monastery, had been in prison from
1960 to 1979 and had been rearrested in 1987.
I had heard about Yulu’s case on the Chinese television news, but now
he told me the story himself with certain bewilderment.
He had gone to a friend’s house for dinner and while there he had met a
monk he had known many years before, a monk who had fled from Tibet in 1959 and
settled in Italy. The monk had
returned to Tibet with an Italian friend and Yulu happened to remark that
Tibet’s problems could be solved only if the country regained independence.”
“Their conversation somehow reached the ears of the
Chinese Security Bureau, which promptly arrested Yulu and his host, Thupten
Tsering, and charged them with “spreading counter-revolutionary propaganda”.
A simple conversation had been elevated into an international conspiracy!
The purpose of the gathering, according to the Security Bureau, was “to win
the support of foreign countries”.”
Page
198
1991
In 1987, the prisoners at Drapchi prison held a demonstration on behalf
of a very young prisoner who had died because of medical neglect for injuries he
sustained during a beating. In 1991
James Lilley, the American ambassador to China, visited Drapchi prison and the
same prisoners who had organized the first demonstration put together a petition
to give to Lilly. Their attempt
failed and two were severely punished, eventually being sent to another prison.
There were a large number of young political prisoners as a result of the
almost yearly protests in Lhasa, they were unruly and determined not to give in
to the Chinese.
“The authorities decided that brutality was the only way to react to
our rebelliousness. Guards began to
use violence to punish the slightest infringement.
But the prisoners were unyielding. They
said openly that they would prefer to die than submit to the Chinese.
It was a battle of wills. For
those who use brute force, there is nothing more insulting than a victim’s
refusal to acknowledge their power. The
human body can bear
immeasurable
pain and yet recover.
Wounds can heal. But once
your spirit is broken, everything falls apart.
So we did not allow ourselves to feel dejected.
We drew strength from our convictions and, above all, from our belief
that we were fighting for justice and for the freedom of our country.”
Page
213
1992
“About thirty of the political prisoners in Drapchi were women and
twenty-seven were nuns. Between them they had staged many demonstrations in
Lhasa, calling for Tibetan independence. One of the lay women, a teacher called
Dawa Dolma, was charged with teaching a “reactionary song”. She had merely
taught her students to sing the Tibetan national anthem and for this she had
received a three-year sentence.
During interrogations, many of the nuns had been stripped naked and made
to stand still while guards paraded before them, brandishing their electric
batons in a lewd, provocative manner. The nuns’ resilience seems awesome to me
when I think of the humiliations and terrible beadings they received.”
Page 217
On 25 August 1992 Palden was released from Drapchi prison. He escaped from Tibet in September and made his way to Dharamsala. He had been adopted as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, who had been regularly pleading his cause to the Chinese since 1983.
Palden Gyatso with some of the torture instruments that he smuggled out of Tibet. Included are thumbcuffs, handcuffs, serrated and hooked knives carried by the guards, an electric cattle prod, and an electric shock gun with a capacity of 70,000 volts.
Selections gathered by Allison Ebbets
Picture Credits
1. 1993, Steven Marshall, Lhasa
2. Photographer unknown
3. 1986, Tibet Image Bank
4. 1979, Dalai Lama's first delegation
5. 1996, Steven Marshall, Lhasa
6. 1996, Marcos Prado
7. 199?, David Hoffman