Testimony from Tibet

Dharamsala, Thursdag 28 September 2006.

The Dalai Lama lives since 1959 in Dharamsala, in the mountains of North-India. That year he fled from his homeland Tibet. The country had been occupied by China since 1950, though officially the Chinese government refers to this occupation as the liberation of Tibet.

The traveller with the hat strolls around in the small complex in Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama when he is not abroad. It is build on the slopes of a hill. On top is a temple with three manhigh statues of Buddha.

Two floors down is the Tibet Museum. A small exhibition of photo's and a video showing Tibet before and during the Chinese occupation. Most images are more or less neutral in itself; the deeper impact only becomes clear in the context of knowig what's happening in Tibet. Sometimes though a picture or a report speaks for itself. Like this nun's testimony:


"On 22 November 1989 I participated in a peaceful demonstration in Lhasa with five other nuns from my nunnery. We were immediately arrested and taken to a detention center.

I was interrogated for two months. We were hung from the ceilings, cigarettes were stubbed on our bodies, and we were beaten severely with metal wires. Some female prisoners had electric batons inserted in their private parts.

I was then sentenced to seven years imprisonment and moved to Drapchi Prison. Conditions there were hard - there was never enough food nor other basic necessities and all prisoners were made to work.

We were not allowed to practice any of our religious duties. Nevertheless, we secretly made rosaries out of bread and prayed together. We staged protests against our guards and some of us even recorded a cassette of freedom songs, wich was smuggled out of prison. The punishment for those caught carrying all these things were severe.

After I was released from the prison I was not allowed to rejoin my nunnery and my movements were restricted. Most of my relatives and friends were too scared to maintain contact with me. I then decided to escape to India."

Rinzin Choeny, nun, formerly of Shungseb Nunnery, Tibet.

The visitor with the hat reads the testimony a second time. And even a third, only this time he tries to look at the testimony from the other side, from a Chinese point of view. Because, no matter how poignant a story is, there's always an other side to it. He can't do it however. Not now anyway, maybe later.

He who has an eye for it can see this type of exhibitions throughout the world. At Robben Island near Capetown in South-Africa it is shown how Nelson Mandela was kept prison for 27 years. In Umtata in the Transkei a museum is dedicated to his life, with a prominent appearance of those 27 years. In same Sout-Africa, in Pretoria, is the Voortrekkersmonument. Erected by the white Afrikaanders from Dutch origin it shows the history of that people, including all the hardships they endured partly on the count of nature partly on the count of other people..

There are numerous places in Sout America that have testimonies in one way or another of human atrocities. In Chile or Argentina for instance. Who hasn't heard of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo?

In different places in India monuments have been erected to commemorate tragedies in the far or near past. Like the one in Amritsar. In 1919, in a park named Jalianwallah Bagh, the British generaal Dyer thought he had to set an example and had over 300 people killed, leaving over a thousand wounded.

If you like, you can go to places in the US and in Australia, to see how white immigrants treated the native inhabitants of those lands. Not a pleasant story. Since a few years there's a monument in New York on the spot that till recently had two giant towers.

In Europe too it's not difficult to visit places that depict the devilish way humans treat eachother from time to time. Auschwitz in Poland and Dachau near Munich are freely accessible, both to go in and out. So are the numerous torture-rooms in fortresses and castles dating from the middle ages, the times of the inquisition or later dates. That free accessebilty hasn't always been the case, especcially not going out.

At the end of the modest exhibition in the Tibet Museum the visitor with the hat comes to the guestbook. Curious as he is he flips through the pages. Mostly messages of thanks and support and ecouragements to go on with the strugle for a Free Tibet. Now and then a message to ponder over. Like this one:

"In the Boer War many, many Afrikaander women and children were detained in British concentration camps. Many died.
Some 50 years later, as that same Afrikaander people had rose to power in South Africa, they themselves detained many, many black people and had them tortured. Many died or lived on with unerasable scars on their souls.

In the 1930's en 40's the Chinese people suffered dearly from Japanese occupation and its gruelsome regime. Within 10 years, as they had overcome the Japanese cruelties, this same Chinese people occupied a foreign country and started inflicting misery upon its people themselves.

In the 1940's many Jewish people were detained and massmurdered in German concentration camps.
Less than 60 years later, within two generations, after having overcome the gruelsome horrors of the Nazi-era and after having established a state of their own, this same Jewish people inflicted suffering ad injustice upon others.

In 2001 in New York the Amican people suffered a major shock when 3.000 innocent people died in just one day.
Within three years, after gettig hold of oneself again, that same American people had killed, apparently without even a blink of an eye, countless innocent people themselves, or at least supported it.

Since 1950 the Tibetan people suffer from Chinese domination, cruelty and injustice in their own land.
Hopefully that same Tibetan people will one day be master in their homeland again. Hopefully they will then not make the same mistakes so many peoples did before them."

It doesn't take much to suffer from injustice or cruelty inflicted by others.
It does take a lot to overcome those injustices and cruelties.
However, that's still nothing compared to what it takes not to inflict injustices or cruelties to others, after having suffered and overcome one's own.


Greetings, ton.