LEH, India—The United States recently took an unprecedented step in calling attention to human rights in Tibet. Here in Leh, there are Tibetans who can comment on their first-hand experience with human rights abuses they suffered.
In a first-ever meeting between the Tibet government in exile and the U.S. State Department, the newly appointed State Department’s Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, Robert Destro, met the president of the Tibetan Government in Exile, Lobsang Sangay, in Washington for formal talks on Oct. 15 to address the “dire human rights issues” suffered by Tibetans at the hands of the CCP.
Around the same time, The Epoch Times talked with two senior refugees who shared what they witnessed before and after the communists took over Tibet and their stories of migration through the treacherous Himalayan terrain into Ladakh.
Kalsang Lhamo, 85 vividly remembers the tactics the CCP used against the Tibetan religious and political leaders in Chantang, a nomadic area in Ngary Province.
“We were asked to throw soil on them. To spit on them,” Lhamo told The Epoch Times on a sunny morning in the Tibetan refugee colony of Agling in Leh, 126 miles from the border where India and China are currently facing each other in a tense standoff.
Lhamo recalled that the communists gave her father a small black and white picture of Dalai Lama and Mao Zedong. “They told us to raise our hand for whatever Mao teaches and show a fist for whatever Dalai Lama says,” said Lhamo adding that raising a hand meant acceptance for Mao and showing a fist meant the Dalai Lama’s government is “over.”
“They told us the Tibetan constitution is wrong. They told us through the Chinese revolution, they will give us human rights, religious rights. They cheated us,” said Lhamo while rotating a prayer wheel with one hand and moving the beads of her white rosary with the other.
“One side of the Tibetan monasteries is painted red. They told us the red color of the monastery is the blood and sweat of you—poor people. They told us the monastery people have fooled us in the name of religion,” said Lhamo while seated on a chair in the courtyard of another senior refugee, Lobsang Tempa, 91.
Kalsang Lhamo, 85 rotates her prayer wheel in the Tibetan refugee colony, Agling in Leh, India on Oct. 18, 2020 (Venus Upadhayaya/Epoch Times)Tempa listened from the window as Lhamo talked and his son, Ngodeep Gurmey, 57 translated. “When Chinese came into our country, they sat for a few years saying we are neighbors,” said Lhamo. “Yakpo, Yakpo! They knew only two Tibetan words.”
Gurmey said, “Yakpo, Yakpo!” means “good, good” in Tibetan.
“They cheated us. Slowly they started torturing us. Our Ruthoktsong (political leaders) and Labrang (religious leaders) were publicly tortured and insulted,” said Lhamo. “Our leaders were forced to say ‘sorry.’ Their hands were tied with ropes, and there were Chinese guards with rifles behind them.”
“They did no mistake. They were forced to say sorry. It was a drama,” said Lhamo who was 25 when she saw the communists decrying Tibet’s age-old political and religious institutions.
Two years later in the spring, her family watered their fields to show it was a normal day and they had no plans to go anywhere, and silently they left Changtang along with 300 others for Ladakh. The family left with over 700 sheep, 100 Yaks, and over 20 horses.
The whole Agling colony in Ladakh today is inhabited by refugees from Changtang. Tempa even remembers the date he left his home in Rutok —August 12-13, 1960.
“We walked for seven days and landed in Demchok. We walked at night and hid with our livestock in the valleys during the morning,” said Tempa who was a nomad in Chamtang and walked into India with five related families and 100 Yaks, 1000 sheep and two horses.
In Kachkshung inside Ladakh, both Tempa and Lhamo’s families lost all their stock to extreme cold and snow within one year of their migration from Tibet. “It was dead animals everywhere,” said Tempa, his wrinkled face turned sad and his eyes closed.
“We had to leave behind old men and old women because they couldn’t walk such treacherous altitude. Our nation also got captured. It was a very difficult time,” said Tempa.
Inside India, Tempa earned his living by supplying rations to the Indian army stationed on extreme heights, reachable only by horses then. It would take fifteen days on horses from Leh to reach the disputed border where India and China are facing each other today.
“I have been to Galwan almost every winter and summer when I was supplying rations to the army,” said Tempa about the heights in Galwan where twenty Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers lost their lives in a bloody conflict on June 15.
Lobsang Tempa, 91 in his home in the Tibetan refugee colony Agling in Leh, India on Oct. 18, 2020 (Venus Upadhayaya/Epoch Times)Both Tempa and Lhamo are aware of what’s happening inside Tibet and on the India-China border today. For Tempa it brings back memories of what happened inside Tibet, and he feels frightened.
Lhamo doesn’t want to talk about it. “I don’t pay attention to what’s happening today. I just eat, sleep and chant my mantra–Om mani padme hum,” she said, her face visibly agitated.
While getting up from the plastic bench on which she was seated, her wrinkled face again becomes tense and sad. “They tortured us. They talked Gandi-Gandi batain [dirty things in Hindi],” she said adding that those memories still pain her.
Abuses Continue
The abuses suffered by Tibetans have continued since the immigration of Tempa, Lhamo, and their families.
In the first seven months of 2020, the Chinese Communist Party trained half a million Tibetans in the Tibetan Autonomous Region in “military-style” vocational training to reform “backward thinking.” The training included “work discipline,” law, and the Chinese language, according to The James Town Foundation.
“This draconian scheme shows a disturbing number of close similarities to the system of coercive vocational training and labor transfer established in Xinjiang,” said the Foundation.
Lobsang Tempa, 91 talks to The #EpochTimes in his broken Hindi about the times he migrated from Tibet to Ladakh.
“We were frightened. We had to leave behind (older people). We walked at night. We walked in daytime.”
Story soon. #EpochTimes pic.twitter.com/59PS8MTTxy
— Venus Upadhayaya (@venusupadhayaya) October 19, 2020
Destro said in a message on Twitter on Oct. 15 that the United States is concerned with the ongoing crackdown on Tibetan Buddhists by the CCP.
“The U.S. is concerned by the lack of meaningful autonomy for Tibetans and the CCP’s ongoing crackdown on Tibetan Buddhists. As Special Coordinator, I will continue urging the PRC to respect the human rights and unique religious, cultural, and linguistic identity of Tibetans,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Chinese regime has called the appointment of Destro as a “vain try.”
“This is a vain try. China has always opposed setting the so-called ‘coordinator for Tibet issues.’ It has never admitted the position nor will it have contact with the so-called coordinator. As a result, Destro, like his predecessors, would never get the chance to visit Tibet,” Zhu Weiqun, former head of the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference told The Global Times, the Chinese state-run media.
Focus News: Tibetan Refugees on Indo-China Border Recall How Chinese Regime Pushed Them Out