Jailed Tibetan Nun's Songs of Freedom

[Guest guest]

Songs of Freedom

Sudeshna Sarkar

 

[ IANS ]

(Kathmandu, April 2) A collection of songs secretly recorded by a

group of young Tibetan nuns jailed in China for advocating Tibet's

freedom is finally being heard outside bars.

 

The Free Tibet Campaign organisation is distributing the CD, "Seeing

Nothing but the Sky", containing songs that 14 nuns, some as young as

16, secretly recorded during their imprisonment in the notorious

Drapchi jail in Tibet.

 

The album includes a song secretly taped by the women in the summer of

1993 that was condemned by the Chinese authorities as "criminal" and

"counter-revolutionary".

 

The nuns were punished with beatings, starvation and lengthy jail terms.

 

Five of the "Singing Nuns", as the women came to be known, died in

prison while the one given the longest sentence, Phuntsog Nyidron, was

released last month when she went into exile in the US.

 

"The Chinese have taken Tibet, our home," goes the song that the

prison authorities tried to suppress by searching cells to confiscate

the cassette that was smuggled outside prison and survived.

 

"Tibetans are locked away in prison/Oh, fellow Tibetans, please come

here/ Buddhism's holy land will be free some year."

 

The nuns were arrested between 1989 and 1992 for refusing to abjure

the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of the Tibetans. They were found

guilty of "counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement" and

punished with hard labour.

 

When it became known that the women were recording Tibetan songs in

their cells, the crackdown intensified with additional jail terms that

ranged between two to eight years.

 

Most of the freed and surviving nuns have gone into exile in the US.

 

One of them, Ngawang Sangdrol, said in New York: "We recorded the

songs because we wanted our families to know that we were still alive,

and we wanted Tibetan people to know about our situation and our love

for our country.

 

"We hoped it would reach our families, but we didn't know for sure. I

had no idea until I arrived in America that people all over the world

heard those songs while we were still in prison.

 

"Now, it makes me feel so sad to listen to the recording because I

remember our friends in prison who died."

 

The distribution of the CD comes with the circulation of the secret

trial document obtained by the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT),

an organisation championing the cause of Tibetans.

 

"The document makes it clear that the nuns' non-violent acts of

defiance and continued comradeship and loyalty to the Dalai Lama in

prison were regarded by the authorities as threats to the Chinese

state," the ICT said.

http://spirituality.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1474422.cms