JULY 17, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 2

Tenzin Dorjee for TIME. Norzin Wongmo, a Tibetan nun, says she was tortured after being detained for shouting slogans against the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

The Price of Protest
A nun's tale of arrest and torture
By MEENAKSHI GANGULY Dharamsala

Any smart teenager knows that it is only the stupid or the desperate who take on someone much bigger and stronger than them. Norzin Wongmo, a tall, serene Tibetan nun says she was desperate. So on the morning of Dec. 9, 1993, Wongmo, then 16, and seven other nuns walked from their Shugseb nunnery to Barkhor, the main temple area in Lhasa, mingled with the crowd of devotees and then started shouting slogans against the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The protest was over in an instant: the ever-vigilant police pounced upon them, tied their arms behind their backs and began dragging them off. As they were taken away, the nuns shouted, "Free Tibet!"

The dream of a free homeland is rapidly disappearing. Among Tibetans these days, it is mostly the nuns and monks, those most affected by China's religious repression, who continue to protest against the occupation. "The Chinese are always saying that we Tibetans are content in their regime," says Wongmo, now in exile in India. "I wanted to let them know that we are not happy."

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After her arrest, Wongmo was taken to the infamous Gutsa Detention Center for rigorous interrogation: Who started the protests? Who told you Tibet was a free country? "When I said that no one had told me, that I knew Tibet had been forcibly occupied by the Chinese, they would not believe me," says Wongmo, who grew up in Chinese-controlled Tibet. "'You are too young,' they said."

Wongmo's insubordination was punished with a vengeance. She says she was kicked, beaten, flogged with a rubber cord (which permanently damaged her left eye) and given electric shocks in her vagina with a cattle prod. Human rights activists say these are common forms of torture in Tibetan prisons. So is aerial suspension, where a prisoner is hung from a ceiling and choked on chili or coal fumes. Some are stripped and left standing in the snow, chased by vicious dogs or chained in cuffs that lacerate the ankles or wrists. Almost all of the actual torture and interrogation, in fact, is carried out by ethnic Tibetan troops. "They were my own people, Buddhists like me," says Wongmo. "I felt sad for them because they were giving me so much pain and they would get that same pain later."

After eight months of detention, Wongmo and her fellow nuns were tried and sentenced to six years in Drapchi prison. "Every day, we were forced to say that Tibet is a part of China," she recalls. Released in December 1998, she fled to India. Staring out her window at a remote nunnery near Dharamsala, Wongmo says she is happy to get back to her religious training. She kisses a picture of the Dalai Lama, vowing: "As long as the Dalai Lama is alive, there is still hope for freedom."

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