By IPS Correspondents
DHARAMSALA, India, Jul 12 2005 (IPS)

For former political prisoner Adhe Tapontsang, the 27 years she spent in a Chinese jail, for aiding the Tibetan resistance in the 1950s, was sheer hell.

”I’m lucky to be alive,” she told IPS. ”There were 300 female Tibetan prisoners in the Gothang Gyalgo detention center. Only four of us survived.”

Adhe Tapontsang or Amah Adhe (Mother Adhe), as she is affectionately known here, talked about the hunger she and her Tibetan friends endured in the Chinese jail.

”Many of us resorted to cutting up our leather shoes and eating them because were so hungry. The guards would feed us some sickly looking gruel but that wasn’t enough,” she recalled.

”I always hoped that a brighter time would come and that one day I would be able to leave the prison as a free human being and be with my children. But I felt there was not much chance for experiencing it because everyone around me was dying and perhaps I would die here also,” added Tapontsang in reminiscence of her own suffering.

Tapontsang was released in 1985 and in 1987 she fled Chinese-occupied Tibet for India, leaving her family behind. She now lives in Dharamsala, which is the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, at the foothills of the Himalayas.

”It saddens me to live with my people in a community of refugees. But it is only in exile that I am free to speak of my life’s joys and sorrows. Until my land is free, I must be in exile,” she explained rather nonchalantly.

On Oct 7, 1950, as United Nations troops under U.S. General Douglas MacArthur crossed the 38th parallel in Korea, 40,000 Chinese soldiers invaded Kham in eastern Tibet – advancing rapidly to the capital Lhasa, following a military plan laid down by Deng Xiaoping. The Tibetan forces engaged in several skirmishes, but were soon encircled.

More than 1.2 million Tibetans died in the Chinese invasion and close to 6,000 monasteries were destroyed by the People’s Liberation Army, with thousands rounded up and imprisoned.

According to the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet the use of detention, arrest, imprisonment, and torture of large numbers of Tibetans continues to be an integral part of China’s efforts to suppress opposition to Chinese rule in Tibet.

”Reasons for arrest can include printing political leaflets, shouting reactionary slogans, encouraging reactionary singing, hoisting or possessing the Tibetan flag and participating in demonstrations,” added the human rights lobby group.

This year’s U.S. State Department’s annual human rights report goes further. The report said the Chinese authorities ”continued to commit serious human rights abuses, including extra-judicial killing, torture, arbitrary arrest, detention without public trial, and lengthy detention of Tibetans for peacefully expressing their political or religious views.”

The State Department report found that repressive social and political controls continued to limit the fundamental freedoms of Tibetans and ”risked undermining Tibet’s unique cultural, religious and linguistic heritage”.

Buddhism was introduced to Tibet in the seventh century by King Songsten Gampo, and is the primary religion of contemporary Tibetans.

”The persecution of Tibetans by China over the last 40-50 years, it’s quite a well known thing to the public, but recently there’s a change in the strategy by China, because they are developing economically,” said Ngawang Sangdrol, a young Tibetan nun who spent more than a decade in prison.

Beijing is pouring billions of dollars of investment into Tibet, but Sangdrol said this was only to the benefit of the Chinese.

Critics point out that this investment brings with it a flood of Han Chinese immigration and the destruction of Tibet’s cultural heritage.

”The human rights situation is deteriorating because they (China) want to eradicate the Tibetan race,” said Sangdrol.

Sangdrol’s crime at 13 was to shout ”Independence for Tibet” and ”Long live the Dalai Lama” during a protest in the capital Lhasa.

The Buddhist nun’s continual defiance against the authorities won her extended prison sentences, amounting to 23 years in total, although they were suddenly commuted three years ago ahead of a visit by then Chinese President Jiang Zemin to U.S. President George W. Bush’s Texas ranch.

But Jiang Zemin together with six other Chinese officials, including former Prime Minister Li Peng have been named in a criminal lawsuit, filed late last month in Spain’s High Court, for crimes against humanity and genocide in Tibet.

Supported by 31 legal experts, Tibetan non-governmental organisations, individuals, Tibet support groups and human rights organisations, those filing the lawsuit have initiated proceedings that could open the doors of justice for thousands of Tibetan victims of human rights abuses.

”In bringing some of the perpetrators of intense human cruelty to account for their actions, the case will provide the first legal definition of suffering inflicted upon the Tibetan people,” wrote Spanish prosecution lawyer Jose Elias Esteve in the July issue of the New Delhi-based ‘Tibet Review’ publication.

”Whilst retributive justice is a significant aid to reconciliation, it will be the first occasion that Tibetan victims of Chinese actions can testify openly about their suffering to a court that is empowered to sentence the perpetrators and provide the first legally binding judgement on the nature of the crimes committed on them,” added Esteve.

Spanish judges have taken a leading role in prosecuting international human rights crimes using the so-called doctrine of ”universal justice”. In April, Spain’s High Court sentenced an Argentine former navy captain to 640 years in prison for crimes against humanity during his country’s 1976-1983 ”dirty war” against leftists.

But before the accused can be ordered to stand trial, there are a series of legal provisions that must be complied with. Spanish judges must first decide that China’s legal system does not recognise the crimes that each defendant stands accused of, and that the same legal system is incapable of providing a fair trail.

Commenting on the lawsuit, Tapontsang said, ”For me this is great because we can present a case against China. This is a triumph not only for the Tibetan people but also for all those who have been supporting a free Tibet.”

”Let us not forget that the Chinese Communist Party killed the largest number of people in history – Chinese themselves, Tibetans and other indigenous people,” she concluded. (END/IPS/AP/EU/WD/HD/IP/CR/SI/RDR/05)

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