By Tenzin Monlam
DHARAMSHALA, March 19: A former Tibetan political prisoner and a human rights activist on Wednesday testified before the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human rights in Brussels.
Jigme Gyatso, better known as Golog Jigme , who assisted in the making of ‘Leaving Fear Behind’, called on the European Parliament to challenge China’s oppressive policies.
Jigme was arrested on three occasions between 2008 and 2012 for his involvement in the documentary by Dhondup Wangchen in the run up to Beijing Olympics, and for his involvement in March 2008 peaceful protest in Labrang.
“They hung me forward with my back against the chair. Both my ankles were shackled below the chair’s seat and wrists shackled on the chair’s small metal table. Hanging in the air, my whole body weight was borne by my shackled ankles and wrists. I felt my chest was going to split into two and all my intestines were going to fall onto the floor. It made me dizzy and could not see properly,” he said.
“The pain the chair caused when they hung me was too extreme to feel any of the pain caused by the metal sticks or the kicking they inflicted during the torture. When they gave me electric shocks, I could feel nothing. I could only smell the burning of my own flesh,” he said in his testimony.
Having been tortured for 51 days by the Chinese authorities when he was first arrested in 2008, the 47-year old monk expressed that the pain of thirst was the second worst torture for him since he was given a very small amount of water. He said that he got used to hunger and sleep deprivation over time but never to thirst.
He also shared how he managed to escape into exile from detention in 2012 after learning about his arrest warrant for a murder he did not commit.
Urging EU to not leave it unseen and to hear the Tibetan people’s suffering, he said, “Tibet has become like a prison under Chinese occupation. I escaped from this prison. I came to a free country. My body is in a free country but my heart will always remain with the suffering of my Tibetan brothers and sisters.”
He also called the Chinese government to stop the resettlement of Tibetan nomads, nullify the TAR’s annual lockdown around March 10 and to improve the living conditions of the Tibetan political prisoner currently in Chinese prisons.
He also urged the EU to pressurize Beijing to release all those Tibetans imprisoned for their peaceful and non-violent protests.
