Tenzin Thupten from Michungri nunnery was about to complete her prison term when she participated in recording songs conveying messages of freedom and words to her friends inside the prison. Today Tenzin Thupten is languishing in one of the worst prisons in Tibet, Drapchi prisn with a prison term of fourteen years.
Tenzin Thupten (layname-Dawa Yangkyi), born in Melldro Gongkar in Lhasa city is a 26 year old nun from Michungri nunnery. Her parents now in their 50’s, are nomads and she was 4 or 5 younger siblings. Tenzin had no opportunity to go to school as she was required to help her parents with farming which was also their means of livelihood.
In 1988, when she was around 18 year old, Tenzin joined the nunnery- an opportunity in disguise for her to procure some education. At the time the nunnery was being restored and she also assisted with the renovation work.
On 5 March 1989, she participated in the protest that took place in Lhasa. Filled with courage and determination and indifferent to the potential consequences, she called for the restoration of Tibet’s freedom. That day she escaped the Chinese authorities by running away in the midst of the crowd.
After that, when a Chinese “Re-education Management Committee” came to the nunnery to launch the re-education policy, Tenzin and a group of other nuns pasted posters both inside and outside of the nunnery. The posters condemned Chinese rule in Tibet and the presence of the Re-education Management Committee in the nunnery.
As a result, the members of the Management Committee decreed that Tenzin Thupten and the other nuns be expelled from the nunnery. The head of the nunnery, Ven. Ngawang Dechen and Jampa Choezom reasoned that Tenzin Thupten and the other could not be expelled, explaining to the Committee that violation of the basic Buddhist principles were the sole grounds for expulsion from the nunnery. Ultimately, it was Tenzin’s extensive contribution to the renovation of the nunnery which prevented her from being expelled.
In 1990, at the time of Shoton (the Tibetan opera festival) in Norbulingka (the summer place of the Dalai Lama), eight nuns from Michungri Nunnery and five from Garu Nunnery held a short protest. Soon after the protest began Chinese officials arrived. The nuns were beaten severely and then arrested.
Tenzin Thupten was taken to Gutsa Prison where she was interrogated while being brutally beaten. She was charged with “counter -revolutionary” activities and later sentenced to five years in prison by the Lhasa City People’s Intermediate Court. She was subsequently transferred to Drapchi prison where she was held in the 1st unit.
In Drapchi prison, political prisoners were subjected to particularly stringent rules and were a constant target for cruel prison punishments such as forced labor. Tenzin was kept under a strict time table of severe beatings and other methods of torture and survived on an extremely poor prison diet.
Nonetheless, she did not lose her will to struggle. In 1993 she and a group of 13 other nuns recorded songs with a crude tape recorder smuggled into the prison and the recording was later distributed in Tibet. The songs carried messages of freedom and some words to their friends and relatives outside the prison.
When Tenzin’s involvement was discovered, her sentence was increased, her sentence was increased by a further nine years brining her term to a total of 14 years.
Tenzin’a friends in the nunnery say that her family has to strive hard to make ends meet. Tenzin’s mother, her most frequent visitor, visits the prison dressed shabbily with one child on her back and one in the front.
Today Tenzin Thupten suffers from a kidney disorder, one of the most common ailments suffered by Tibet’s political prisoners. Yet, her courage and determination remain strong. If she should refrain from exercising her freedom of expression in the prison, she will be released in probably the year 2004.
Express your concern over Tenzin’s arbitrary detention- a punishment expressing her freedom of opinion, and the inhumane conditions of imprisonment under which she struggles. Write a letter of protest addressed to the Chinese premier Li Peng and send it to TCHRD for forwarding.