Keeping Faith: Tibet in Exile
A photo essay by Kitty Leaken
Part One
Kitty is a Program Director and Board Member of FOTWA, and, with Sarah Lukas, co-founder of the Painting Club.
Her photographs appear in
The Art of Exile.
Palden Gyatso is a 62-year-old Buddhist monk who reached Dharamsala in 1992 after 24 years of horror, torture, hard labour and humiliation in various prisons and labour camps in Tibet. When asked how he had managed to survive, he replied that, "the only drive to stay alive was that I was determined to tell the outside world what was happening in Tibetan prisons." He was arrested for resisting the Chinese occupation of Tibet. While imprisoned he was beaten with a stick with nails on the end, kept hand and leg-cuffed for eight months, starved, and was repeatedly subjected to high-powered shocks from an electric baton - he lost his teeth when the device was applied to his mouth. When he was finally released, Palden smuggled a 33-kilo backpack of the torture implements out of the camp, a feat he achieved by bribing a guard. He travels the world today, determined to tell his story and the story of the Tibetans he has left behind in prison and in the prison that is his country. Palden wishes above all to turn his suffering into usefulness. His burning desire to inform the outside world has not left him.
- from LIFELINES: How a Tibetan Monk Survived 24 Years of Imprisonment by Francisca van Holthoon.
Torture implements that Palden
Gyatso managed to bring out of Tibet. Included are 3 electric batons. The high
setting on one carries enough voltage to send a person across a room.
Self-tightening handcuffs click together with the slightest movement.
Thumbcuffs are used to strap a prisoner's hands diagonally across his/her back
and then suspended from the ceiling.
A nun who has recently arrived
in India breaks into tears at the memory of her 3 years' imprisonment in Lhasa
for shouting freedom slogans.
Two nuns at Dolma Ling Nunnery
in Dharamsala, India, share their stories of imprisonment and torture for
shouting slogans such as "Free Tibet" and "Long Live the Dalai Lama." They each
served 3 years. After their release they fled to India in order to continue
practicing their religion.
"P.T." was beaten so fiercely
that she lost most of her sight in her left eye. Forced to clean the toilets
for the Chinese military and authorities of the prison, she wasn't given water
to wash her hands afterwards. She had to eat with her hands as they were not
given utensils. Sometimes she sacrificed her single cup of morning tea just to
wash her hands.
A brother and sister who have
just arrived at the Reception Centre for Tibetan Refugees in Dharamsala, India.
Recent arrivals from Tibet
register at the Reception Centre in Dharamsala, India. The Tibetan
government-in-exile will place them in a Tibetan settlement in India.
His Holiness, the Dalai Lama,
greets his people at Namgyal Monastery in Dharamsala, India.
Tibetans line the path awaiting
a special glimpse of His Holiness on his way to the monastery in Dharamsala,
India.
Kitty Leaken angkor@rt66.com
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