A Tibetan porter’s personal account of the anguish, heartbreak and struggle he and other Tibetans faced on trying to re-enter Tibet. Their crime: attempting to attend the Kalachakra teachings in India.
Tibetan porter, Trinley Norbu gives this first-hand, moving account of the struggle and anguish he and three other ordinary Tibetans faced on re-entering Tibet after their attempt to attend the Kalachakra teachings in India was blocked by the Nepali authorities. The TCHRD got exclusive access to this human story of how he and four other men were detained several times in Tibet before they were driven back to Nepal. It’s a story of how they were denied entry to their homeland and access to their families simply for wanting to attend Buddhist teachings; and of how other ordinary, working Tibetans faced imprisonment, beatings, deception and paranoid questionings regarding His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the exiled political head Lobsang Sangay. Norbu’s testimony also tragically reveals the complicity of the Chinese and Nepalese authorities (taking photos of themselves together); and how the Tibetans became caught in ‘a no-man’s land’ being sent back and forth like pawns between the Nepalese and Chinese police corruption. Their torment finally came to an end when UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, came to their aid in a Nepalese prison. Here is Trinley Norbu’s account in full: