Amnesty International Group 30

By far the largest group of female political prisoners incarcerated by the Chinese government is in the Tibet Autonomous Region, where women make up about one third of the political prisoner population of Tibet. Almost all of them are nuns.

On October 11, 1989, Tibetans heard that their exiled spiritual and temporal leader, the 14th Dalai Lama, had been awarded the Nobel Peace prize. Three days later six nuns staged a peaceful demonstration in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, to mark the occasion, chanting independence slogans as they marched in procession. Within minutes they were arrested by the police and subsequently interrogated, tortured, tried, and imprisoned. The tape was circulated secretly in Tibet and is now available on CD in the West from the Free Tibet Campaign (www.freetibet.org) in England.

The songs paint a chilling picture of life in prison:

The food does not sustain body or soul
Beatings impossible to forget
This suffering inflicted upon us
May no others suffer like this.

But they also display their unbroken spirit, as one sings:

All of you outside who have done all you can for us in prison, we are deeply grateful to you and we will never forget you.

In 1995 Phuntsog Nyidron won the annual Reebok Human Rights Award for young people. In Reebok’s words, “She is a symbol of freedom of expression, an extraordinary woman who continues to non-violently advance the cause of human rights at the cost of her own personal freedom and safety.”