Tibetan Monk
Palden Gyatso
Political Prisoner
Tibetan Monk
Palden
Gyatso
Political
Prisoner
-> view photos from his speech at JMU <-
Palden Gyatso, an ordained Tibetan Monk, was captured during the Lhasa uprising on March 10, 1959 and spent the next 33 years of his life in Chinese prisons enduring torture, interrogation and enforced thought reform by Chinese officials. Amazingly, throughout his imprisonment he resisted the Chinese authorities and served as an inspiration to his fellow inmates. Palden's mission is to educate the public about the ongoing repression of Tibet by the Chinese government with faith that one day soon he will see a free Tibet.
Palden Gyatso recently had
his autobiography published at 64 years of age. Palden came to
JMU to talk about the life of the people in Tibet since the
Chinese invasion of 1950 and subsequent occupation since then. He
will discuss his experience of 33 years in Chinese jails,
including showing the devices used by the Chinese jailers to
torture prisoners. The Venerable Palden Gyatso spent over three
decades in Chinese prisons and labor camps in Tibet before
escaping to the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala, India.
About Palden
Gyatso
Palden Gyatso was born in 1933 and raised in a small
Tibetan village. At the age of eighteen he became an ordained
Buddhist monk at one of Tibet's most famous monasteries, Drepung
Monastery. In 1959, Palden was jailed along with thousands of
other religious Tibetans. The Chinese under its leader Mao then
undertook the 'Cultural Revolution' which was aimed at destroying
Tibetan culture and producing 'thought reform' amongst the
Tibetan people.
Palden endured his suffering and remained in prisons and labor
camps for the next 33 years, where he was a victim of severe
religious and class oppression. He was exposed to various forms
of indoctrination and torture aimed at trying to make him change
his ways and accept the Chinese communist/socialist ideology.
Throughout his imprisonment, Palden resisted the Chinese
repression and served as an inspiration to his fellow inmates.
Released on August 25, 1992, from
Drapchi prison in Lhasa, Palden Gyatso had served more years
behind bars than any other surviving Tibetan that has reached the
West. Prior to his flight out of Tibet into India, at great
personal risk, Palden procured instruments of torture like the
ones which had been used on him in order to show the outside
world. With the torture implements spread before him, his
testimony brings to life the inhuman atrocities committed against
prisoners in Tibet.
Since 1992 Palden has devoted his entire life to exposing the
atrocities of the Chinese occupiers, especially amongst the
political prisoners. He has traveled and spoken extensively to
people around the world. In 1995 he gave evidence at the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. He also testified
before the United Nations and the U.S. Congress about the human
rights abuses he had suffered, fulfilling his dream to tell the
world about China's torture techniques and prison conditions in
Tibet. In 1996 Palden conducted a 300-mile walk from the Chinese
consulate in Washington, DC to the United Nations in New York
City. Organized by the International Tibet Independence movement,
the walk began on March 10, the Tibetan National Uprising Day.
In 1997 Palden's story, The
Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk, was translated by Tsering Shakya
and published by Grove Press. In his testimony, Palden describes
China's penal system in Tibet and the ruthless tortures he and
his co-jailers experienced. He says, 'A prison official poked me
with an electric cattle prod and poured boiling water over me
because he said he did not like my attitude. No medical treatment
was given after that.' Palden's story, like many of his fellow
Tibetans, shows the strength of the human spirit in the face of
tremendous suffering.
