Day 285: Political Prisoner

Post from Tim:

The KhanaNirvana Community Cafe looked more like an Arizona coffeehouse than a typical Indian restaurant, but it should - it was opened by several western expatriates who are in McLeod Ganj helping the Tibetan cause. Besides serving food, the cafe serves the Tibetan freedom cause by publishing a monthly newsletter, acting as an information center, employing recently arrived refugees, and sponsoring lectures every Sunday night.

It was here in a crowded house that we saw the 70 year-old Tibetan monk Palden Gyatso speak about his 33 year experience as a political prisoner in a Chinese jail. Through the aid of a translator, the saffron-robed grandfatherly man talked about the history of Tibet and told a moving story from his start in a small village to his incarceration and torture by the Chinese. His remarkably gentle face surprisingly betrays no bitterness or anger towards his captors despite the hardships they put him through - he watched helplessly as many of his fellow prisoners died of thirst and malnutrition and was frequently tortured with a cattle prod. In one particularly harsh story, he detailed how his Chinese jailers forced a cattle prod in his mouth, breaking two teeth in the process and shocking him unconscious to the ground. The rest of his teeth fell out within a month.

But his story has a happy ending. Through the help of Amnesty International, the Chinese released Palden Gyatso and he fled here to Dharamsala. He detailed his story in the book Fire Under the Snow and has since lectured at 87 schools and universities and has been interviewed by CNN and the BBC. And in the most shining example of his change of fortune, Amnesty International provided him with a new set of teeth, which he happily took out to show the audience.

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