Ngawang Sangdrol is a 24 year old Tibetan Buddhist nun. She is serving a prison sentence of 21 years, which has already
been extended several times from the original three years, and could
well be extended again, making her the longest serving
female political prisoner in Tibet, a land full of political prisoners.

In October 2000, Ngawang Sangdrol was nominated for the prestigious
Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, which is awarded annually by the European Parliament to 'honour individuals or organisations who have devoted themselves to human rights and fundamental freedoms and the struggle against oppression and injustice'.¹

As a ten year old girl, Ngawang Sangdrol marched with a group of nuns to protest the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the harsh restrictions placed by the Chinese authorities on religious freedom, and was arrested for the first time. Under Chinese law she was too young to be tried. Nevertheless, she was detained for 15 days.

Buddhist practice lies at the very heart of the Tibetan identity; and so monks and nuns have been the victims of particularly
brutal treatment. More than 6,000 monasteries and temples were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976); the
few that remain are monitored closely by police and political cadres,
and religious activities severely curtailed. In Lhasa, the
capital of Tibet, and the surrounding region, great temples like the
treasured Jokhang are now little more than stage dressing, the
ancient rituals reduced to a sham for the entertainment of tourists.

A traditional way to express religious devotion is to circumambulate the Jokhang temple. For many years pilgrims have travelled
to Lhasa to inch their way around the great temple, often measuring the distance a body length at a time with their prostrations. To walk in a clockwise direction around the Jokhang is a time-honoured daily prayer ritual for many, a way of anchoring their lives². More recently, monks and nuns have used this ancient practice to signal their resistance to the systematic attack on the Tibetan way of life and their resentment of the alien culture being imposed in its place.

In August 1990, at the age of 13, Ngawang Sangdrol was arrested again
under circumstances similar to her first arrest. Still too
young to be tried, this time she was held for nine months. In many parts of the world, children face particularly brutal treatment
in prisons; and there have been serious allegations of such abuse by
Chinese authorities in Tibet³.

At the age of 15 Ngawang was arrested again. This time she was charged
with 'subversive and separatist' activities. Despite the
fact that she was still a minor under Chinese law, she was sentenced to three years in the notorious Drapchi prison. This sentence was soon extended to six years by prison authorities, who accused her of 'spreading counter-revolutionary propaganda'.

Prisoners of Drapchi have been beaten with belts and bamboo sticks in
response to more or less imaginary provocation, such as not making their beds properly. When Ngawang and several other nuns were forced to stand in the rain, a defiant shout of 'Free Tibet!' resulted in her sentence being extended a further eight years. After a protest in 1996, She was severely tortured and placed in solitary confinement on near starvation rations for two months.

The brutality of the treatment of the nuns in Drapchi prison can
scarcely be imagined. A former prisoner, who escaped into exile
after her release, described what took place in response to a protest by prisoners in 1998,

They beat us so savagely that there was blood everywhere, on the walls
and on the floor. It looked like an abattoir. They beat us with their belts, until their belts broke. Then they used electric batons. Some [of us] had torn ears, others had wounds in their heads.⁴

The refusal of the nuns to sing Chinese patriotic songs and chant
communist slogans led to such a frenzy of violence that five of them,
aged from 22 to 28, committed suicide rather than endure any more.

In 1993, a tape recorder was smuggled into Drapchi prison and 14 young
nuns, including Ngawang Sangdrol, risked their lives by singing
traditional songs and reciting poems into it. The songs are simple
allegorical descriptions of a life of brutal oppression. They speak of
the Chinese occupation of their homeland as a dark cloud passing before the sun. There are many symbolic references to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, which express the hope that he will one day return.

Naturally, the songs are sung in Tibetan, but their real meaning is
obvious. The ambient sounds of the prison can be heard in the
recording; and the cold dampness of the concrete cell can almost be
felt. It is a very powerful recording that takes some courage to listen to. The courage that it took to record the songs is almost beyond the scope of most of us to imagine.

These songs of hope and defiance are available on a CD entitled
Seeing nothing but the sky... from Free Tibet Campaign and Snow Lion Publications in the USA. A book and CD-rom package, which includes 14 songs recorded in Drapchi prison, is available from Tibet
Information Network in the UK.

Whose land is it

On the roof of the world?

It is our homeland;

It is a land of religion;

The ruler of this land is the compassionate
Avalokiteshvara⁵;

Under his compassionate and benevolent leadership,

The people of His land love peace;

The people of His land love freedom;

The people of His land love freedom;

May they gain peace and happiness.

... May they gain peace and happiness.

John the Gardener