Buddhist nuns speak out in protest
Say line will benefit Chinese only
By Rajshree Sisodia
McLeod Ganj, June 30: Her tiny, child-sized feet hang over the edge of the bed swinging carelessly, but Rigzin Choekyi speaks thoughtfully as she recalls the brutal treatment meted out by the Chinese while she was held as a political prisoner in Tibet.
“I really hate the Chinese people and the government. We were imprisoned and tortured and had no rights and that was because of the Chinese. I cannot forgive them,” Choekyi says at the sanctuary for Tibetan refugees in McLeod Ganj, the now mainly Tibetan town a few hundred metres uphill from Dharamsala, in the Himalayan foothills of northern India.
Buddhist nuns Choekyi, 37, and Lhundrub Sangmo, 39, who bear the scars of torture in Lhasa Chinese-run Gutsa and Drapchi prisons, recently fled into exile in India from the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, after years of imprisonment and persecution.
They both spoke out against China’s new railway line into Tibet — testing begins tomorrow, with full operation in a year.
The nuns fear the railway, for which Canadian firms Bombardier Transportation and Nortel Networks Corp. have provided technology, is part of China’s policy of increasing the ethnic Chinese presence in what Beijing considers an “autonomous region” of China.
Tibet was an independent nation when the Chinese army crossed the border in 1950. Several United Nations resolutions have called on Beijing to respect Tibetans’ cultural rights, according to an agreement hammered out in 1951 between the People’s Republic and representatives of the Tibetan government.
“We can’t see anything positive from the railway line,” Choekyi said. “Once the railway line opens, so many Han Chinese will move to Tibet and Tibetans will face trouble.
“Already, where the railway stations are in Lhasa and other areas, the Chinese government has ordered Tibetan families to move from their land and have given (this) space to the Chinese to set up businesses.
“The railway line may bring an increase in tourists and money — but not for Tibetans.”
Officials in Beijing have praised completion of the $4.7 billion (U.S.), 1,956 kilometre railway as a means with which to bring new wealth to Tibet and its people.
Thousands of workers began construction in 2001, working in temperatures as low as -30C at heights of up to 5,000 metres above sea level, with supplies of oxygen on hand to help deal with the altitude. The railway is designed to transport millions of tonnes of cargo and allow a million business people and tourists each year to travel across some of the world’s most spectacular and uncharted terrain.
But while the project may bring greater economic investment, employment and tourism to the region, Tibetans and pro-Tibet campaigners fear that unless Beijing reforms its policies, Tibet’s 7.5 million ethnic Han Chinese will reap the railway’s economic rewards — not the nation’s 6 million Tibetans.
“The important thing to note here is that tourism is only in the major towns and cities and almost 80 per cent of Tibetans live in rural areas,” says Lobsang Nyandak Zayul, minister of international relations for the Tibetan Government in Exile. “So talking about employment opportunities, I doubt the railway line will benefit the Tibetan people. But at the same time, the 7.5 million Chinese living in urban areas (of Tibet) will certainly benefit, and the future Chinese population in Tibet will benefit … (It) depends on the policies employed by the Chinese in Tibet.”
Choekyi and Sangmo were first arrested in Lhasa in 1990 for taking part in peaceful “pro-Tibet” protests; Choekyi received a seven-year sentence, Sangmo four years. Both had five years added to their jail term when they, along with 12 other nuns, were caught recording “free-Tibet” songs in their cells in 1993.
Their defiant act was described by Lhasa City Intermediate People’s Court as “reactionary” and “arrogant” — but it propelled the nuns and their plight into the international arena when some of the tape recordings were smuggled out of Tibet to the West.
Sangmo stares at her hands, turning her prayer beads rhythmically through scarred fingers.
“When we were first arrested, we were not taken together to prison,” Choekyi said. “We were split and taken one-by-one.
“(When I got to the jail), two nuns were already hanging by their hands from a tree in the prison yard, undressed, naked. (Other) nuns were made to pull the nuns up by a rope and the police were beating them with electric prods.
“The prison authorities, the police, put electric prods into our mouths,” she added. “You don’t even realize if your head is still there. The pain was so bad, the shock goes straight to your brain. We were tortured almost every day when they interrogated us to try to get us to say we had made a mistake.”
Released after serving their extended sentences, the nuns say they continued to be threatened by Chinese authorities and prevented from finding work. They fled Tibet on May 12. Their month-long journey to India was made in secrecy. They travelled by Jeep from Tibet to the Nepalese border and made an arduous, two-day trek to the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu before arriving in McLeod Ganj this month.
Their temporary sanctuary is a 200-bed reception centre for Tibetan arrivals, near the home of the Dalai Lama.
At the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi, a spokeswoman said accusations that Choekyi and Sangmo had been tortured in prison — and that the railway line would not benefit the lives of most ordinary Tibetans — were “totally groundless.”
