From Chinese Prison to Geneva, Namkyi Details Surveillance and Torture in Occupied Tibet

By Tenzin Chokyi

DHARAMSALA 19, Feb: After being released from a Chinese prison, an exiled Tibetan activist and former political prisoner, Namkyi, faced an impossible choice: either continue staying in occupied Tibet under perpetual repression and round-the-clock Chinese surveillance or flee her homeland to expose the plight of other Tibetan political prisoners in occupied Tibet under Chinese rule.

At the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy on 18 February, Namkyi bravely shared her story as testimony against the arbitrary and discriminatory practices of imprisonment and the grim state of human rights in occupied Tibet to garner international support for Tibet, especially in the upcoming 58th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

“Although my body was released from prison, my mind continued to be imprisoned. I was restricted in every way possible whether it was meeting my friends or going to a nearby place,” Namkyi said, describing the constant surveillance, police interrogations, and restrictions on her movement.

Before the Chinese officers released her from prison, she said “They called my family members as well as the heads of my village to the police station and made them sign documents saying they would be responsible if I stage any such protest in the future. 

So I had two options, either I had to die in Tibet under Chinese oppression or I had to flee my homeland.”

She expressed her firm belief in finding people and government in the free world to listen to what she has to say about the real situation in occupied Tibet where there is no freedom of religion and language. “Freedom for Tibet is what I believe in and called for and that is why I came into exile,” she said. 

Namkyi, who was a simple Tibetan nomad girl in occupied Tibet, was arrested by Chinese authorities at the age of 15 along with her cousin sister Tenzin Dolma for staging a peaceful protest march against the Chinese government for the return of the Dalai Lama and Kirti Rinpoche to a free Tibet and praying for their long life.

Upon their arrest, they were beaten and detained in a room for about six days and nights for further interrogation during which she had to face severe torture.

During the interrogations, they were made to face heaters at extremely high temperatures, “if I were meat, I would have been like overcooked meat, and I would have been a melting butter in minutes,” Namkyi stated as she detailed her horrific experience of Chinese imprisonment where she was subjected to sleep deprivation and exposed to extreme heat up to 150–160 degrees.

After over a year in detention following her arrest, on 23 November 2016, Chinese authorities sentenced Namkyi(16) to three years in prison on charges of “inciting separatism,” falsely altering her age to 18 to justify the sentence.

She was imprisoned in one of China’s largest women’s prisons, where she had to endure solitary confinement and severe malnutrition despite being forced to work for long hours without sleep, which she described as a discriminatory practice reserved for Tibetans.

“Because of my identity as Tibetan and for the reason that I was in jail, I had to face so much discrimination in prison. This is not just a story about me but of thousands of Tibetans who have suffered and continue to suffer in Chinese jail under repressive Chinese rule.”

Namkyi in her speech recounted when her father had to kneel and beg the prison officer to see her while Chinese prisoners could routinely meet their families. 

Even when allowed to meet, she and her father couldn’t converse since she was allowed to speak only in Mandarin, which her father couldn’t speak or understand.

“As soon as I asked my father how he was, the police officer took the phone away from us and said we could not speak in Tibetan but I told them that my father doesn’t speak Chinese however, they said we could not meet further,” she said, holding her palm to her face, tears filling her eyes at the summit.

Namkyi’s family has also suffered prolonged restrictions in accessing basic facilities such as government benefits and higher education even after her release.

Although her public testimony at the UN can bring threats to her family in occupied Tibet, as China frequently employs collective punishment tools to suppress dissent and foster fear among marginalised and occupied communities, she thanked the opportunity to share her story, which she said is the story of thousands of Tibetans while urging for the continued international support for Tibet and the aspirations of the Tibetan people.

Meanwhile, UK Broadcaster ITV has removed its documentary titled ‘Inside China: The Battle for Tibet’, where Namkyi also testified along with Dr Gyal Lo, a Tibetan activist, educational sociologist, and a leading expert on China’s assimilation and education policies in Tibet against China’s Colonial Boarding schools in Tibet where a million children, some as young as four are forcefully enrolled and taught to “become more Chinese”.

Although a journalist from ITV spent a year secretly filming the exposé to show the plight of Tibetans suffering under Beijing’s rule, China’s UK embassy has objected, declaring it is “filled with bias and false accusations.”