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Trinley Gyatso, or Badzra Trinley as he prefers to be called to personally honor his teacher, is a soft-spoken thirty-year-old monk who escaped to Dharamsala in 1998 after detention, torture, and a sham trial in Gansu province. On the surface, he has adjusted well to life in exile, but he is deeply disappointed at what he sees as the failure of the Tibetan "government-in-exile" to help him find meaningful work, pursue further study, and secure legal status in India.
Badzra Trinley was part of a large nomadic family, growing up with his seven brothers and sisters in Xiahe county, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu province, an overwhelmingly Tibetan area. Home was a traditional black tent made of yak wool in a village some three hours by car from the town of Xiahe itself. For three years, from the time he was seven, Badzra Trinley attended a Tibetan primary school, then helped tend the family's goats and yaks until 1982 when, at the age of fourteen, he entered Labrang monastery. Badzra Trinley explained:
It is not unusual for a Tibetan family to ask a child if he wants to be a monk. When my parents asked me, I said, "Yes, I very much want to be a monk." I have two brothers who are monks and a sister who is a nun. Another sister became a nun when she was thirty, after she had four sons.
Labrang monastery, where Badzra Trinley was enrolled, is one of the great Tibetan religious institutions. For Chinese and foreigners alike it is one of the two most popular Tibetan tourist attractions outside the Tibetan Autonomous Region, and the Chinese government takes pains to maintain the site both for the revenue it produces and as a symbol of the government's alleged policy of religious freedom. According to official Chinese sources, Labrang attracts over 10,000 foreign visitors a year. To better assist them, monks there are studying English and learning to use computers.
Founded in 1709, Labrang grew to have a population of over 3,000 resident monks before the Chinese invasion in the 1950s and its eventual destruction during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). When Badzra Trinley entered Labrang it had been reopened only a few years. Today, considerably restored, although nowhere near its original size, it is a protected cultural monument celebrated for its great physical beauty and its impressive standards of scholarship and discipline. Although the Chinese government limits the resident monastic population, to less than a third that of the 1950s, hundreds of non-resident monks continue their association with Labrang.
In 1989, Badzra Trinley passed an exam which gained him entrance to the Gansu Buddhist Studies Institute (Gansu Sheng Foxueyuan), a four-year school run by the provincial government. It was added to Labrang in 1985. Almost all the school's population, students and teachers alike, were monks, but the curriculum was partly secular and political. In addition to Tibetan subjects, Badzra Trinley and his classmates studied dialectics, Mao Zedong thought, socialist theory, and Chinese language and history. They were instructed that they should first love their country (ai guo), then their religion (ai jiao) and the people (ai min), and they were taught that the Chinese authorities respected religious freedom.
Badzra Trinley finished his studies in 1993, a member of the institute's third graduating class, but his future was decisively influenced by his experiences in the fall of 1992 when he and twenty-three classmates went on a government-sponsored pilgrimage to Lhasa. During the month they were housed in a hotel there, Badzra Trinley came to better know his classmate, Kalsang Gyatso, and Konchok Khachen ("Konchok Big Mouth"), a friend of Kalsang's living in Lhasa. From Konchok, Badzra Trinley received books and video tapes including the Dalai Lama's autobiography, My Land and My People; a videotape of a speech the Dalai Lama made when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989; a booklet of his March 10 statements (March 10 is the anniversary of the 1959 uprising in Lhasa); Guidelines for Future Tibet's Polity and the Basic Features of its Constitution; and copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Another influential event for Badzra Trinley was his meeting in Lhasa with Hortsang Jigme, a scholar from Amdo who was getting ready to leave for India. He gave Badzra Trinley a copy of his poem, "The Character to be Discarded," in which he criticized the Chinese government for forcibly invading Tibet, for its deforestation and mineral extraction policies in Tibet, and for arrogating to itself total sovereignty in Tibet. The poem went on to accuse the Chinese of preempting settlement of the most attractive Tibetan environments, and it urged Tibetans to learn to differentiate between what elements of Chinese influence were worth keeping and what needed to be discarded. (See Appendix.)
For Badzra Trinley, all of what he learned in Lhasa reenforced what he had already learned in Labrang and at home about the Chinese occupation of Tibet and about Chinese interference with traditional Tibetan religious and economic practices. He had heard the stories, coming from many parts of Tibet, of parents killed by the Chinese invaders. And he mentioned some seemingly small irritants that signaled Chinese control:
Although I joined the monastery when I was fourteen, the Chinese rule was that you couldn't wear monk's robes until you were eighteen. And before the Chinese divided and enclosed the grazing land with barbed wire, the nomads had no problems. Later, there were troubles between families and between neighbors and between Tibetans.
Before he left Lhasa, Badzra Trinley purchased enough of the cotton material used to make monks' robes to wrap and transport his newly-acquired books and tapes. Once back at Labrang, he began to make copies of the materials for distribution. He used his room or the room of a close friend to show the video to other friends. Kalsang Gyatso, his classmate, did the same. The several video halls near the school made it easy to rent a projector. Using the school's typewriter, Badzra Trinley made a copy of Hortsang Jigme's poem and arranged for it to be stenciled and the copies sold through a small book stall. He also composed two posters and hung copies up in several different locations in and around the school. The contents, he said, expressed his inner feelings as best as he could, given what he called his limited knowledge and his inability to use "appealing" words. He wrote:
The determination of the Tibetan people should not be undermined. The Tibetan people should not forget the material destruction and abolition of human rights brought by the Chinese government. We have a unique and enlightened leader. We should not be discouraged in our struggle. We will achieve independence because the truth is on our side.
On June 20, 1993, Badzra Trinley graduated. Twenty days later, on July 10, 1993, a Wednesday, the police caught up with him. He explained:
Two new students, Kalsang Lodroe and Kalsang Drakpa, hand-copied the Dalai Lama's March 10 statement and sent the copies, through friends, to their homes in Luchu and Machu [two small overwhelmingly Tibetan counties in Gannan]. Chinese security officers found out when one of Kalsang Lodroe's friends took a copy to a third party in Kalsang Lodroe's monastery in Luchu. That person told where he got thecopy. The officers came to my school and questioned Kalsang Lodroe and Kalsang Drakpa, and they informed on me.
Two county Public Security Bureau (PSB) officers-Pakpa Kyap, was a Tibetan from the political section, and, "Tho," was Han Chinese-came to my room late one evening and asked if I was Trinley Gyatso. They wanted me to come with them; they had something to ask me. I was with my elder brother and some friends. My brother tried to stop them, but they showed an official paper.
They took me in a jeep to an office in the Xiahe County Public Security Bureau. At first they interrogated me politely. "Tell us honestly what you have done, and you will not face problems... If you confess your guilt, you will receive leniency." I said, "I don't know what to tell you. I don't know why I am here." They took out an electric baton and handcuffs and laid them on the table. Then they said, "If you don't tell us honestly, we will treat you with these."
Badzra Trinley repeated that he did not know why he was being detained. He said that he had not been involved in any criminal activities and that he was not harming economic development. He said he did not realize the seriousness of the situation. He told his interrogators, "If I murdered someone, take me to prison."
But they told me, "Don't be silly; you didn't do that. You did something against the law and we know it." I said, "I don't remember that I did anything illegal. If you two know, say so, and if it is true, I will accept it."
He asked them if they were sure they had the right Badzra Trinley, and it was then they told him that one of his friends had already confessed. He realized that he was being held because of the copying.
Then they handcuffed me in front and used the cattle prod, primarily on my arms because I was wearing a monk's robe and my arms were bare. They did this four or five times. Then I had to get on my knees and was cuffed to a table with my arms spread wide until morning. I couldn't sleep. The cuffs had spikes. I was slapped, too, and beaten but not seriously.
The next morning, a police officer named Gelek came to see Badzra Trinley and politely inquired if he had "suffered last night." He suggested, as the other officers had, that by confessing everything honestly, he would avoid further suffering. At Badzra Trinley's repeated protestations that he had no idea what he had done, the officer pointedly mentioned "giving books to friends." At that point, Badzra Trinley saw Kalsang Lodroe being escorted to the bathroom. He immediately replied, "If it is that case, you should have told me earlier and I could have told you, `Yes, I gave books to some of my friends.'"
When pressed to divulge the whereabouts of the rest of the books, Badzra Trinley told the officer that he had burned them, and in response to further questions, said that no one had seen him do it because "it was not good to burn them with the Dalai Lama's picture in them." He said that he had received the books in 1992 from Hortsang Jigme, who was then safely in India.
At this point in the interrogation, a friend of Badzra Trinley's named Jamyang intervened with the police to get Badzra Trinley released for the weekend on condition that he bring the books to the police station on the following Monday. Badzra Trinley returned to the police station as his friend had promised he would, but he did not have the books with him. As a result, he was subjected to an all-day interrogation at the station, then moved to Menkar, a county-level detention center nearby. There he was forced to change from his monk's robe into a track suit for which he had to pay 100 renminbi (approximately U.S.$14).
Badzra Trinley spent two months in Menkar, where he was interrogated fifteen times by the same two officers who had seized him originally and occasionally by Gelek as well. The process generally started off politely enough but degenerated into a routine of punches, kicks, beatings, over-the-shoulder handcuffs, and electric shocks coupled with repeated admonitions to "Tell us about your collaborators and we'll release you," or "Give us the books and you'll be released."
At the end of the two months, Badzra Trinley's older brother, a student at a Buddhist school in Beijing, came home on summer holiday. He and Jamyang together petitioned for Badzra Trinley's temporary release and put up the bail money. The agreement permitted him to return to the monastery in monk's robes but required him to report daily to the Public Security Bureau office, confine himself to the monastery's premises, and refrain from any activities connected to the Tibetan independence struggle. Badzra Trinley had to agree to come when called either for questioning or reimprisonment. He was also unofficially advised that if he became a PSB informer and did well, he would be paid secretly. If not, he would be rearrested.
After Badzra Trinley returned to the monastery, he said he was constantly harassed by the police.
Sometimes, they came to my room in the middle of the night and asked me questions like whether I was truly working for them. They would repeat that if I was able to tell them about other Tibetans engaged in anti-Tibetan activities, they would pay me and my past mistakes would be forgotten and forgiven.
During this time, Badzra Trinley served in the Kalacakra tratshang, a monastic college with a particular emphasis on the Kalacakra tradition, a specific set of Buddhist teachings and practices. As a monk who worked as well as studied, he assisted during the cycle of teachings which constitute the Kalacakra and was part of the monastic dance corps that performed ritual dances during the cycle. He also assisted during the Monlam Chenmo or Great Prayer festival, celebrated immediately after the Tibetan New Year.
On July 11, 1994, Badzra Trinley went to Sangkok, a town twenty kilometers from Labrang, for Kalacakra teachings. By then, he had become involved again in political activities. Two days later, on July 13, despite thousands of visitors and heavy security, people awoke to find political slogans painted on hundreds of tents, motorbikes, and police jeeps. Badzra Trinley, already under surveillance, came under heavy suspicion and was immediately questioned. He said he truly did not know who had managed the feat. Once the teachings finished the following day, the attendees celebrated for five days with picnics, operas, and religious dances. At the end of the festivities, on July 19, Badzra Trinley returned to Labrang.
A few weeks later, Badzra Trinley, having decided to go to Lhasa, went to the Public Security Bureau, as his bail conditions demanded, to ask Pakpa Kyap, the PSB officer responsible for his case, for an identity card. He did not, however, reveal his true destination. When he returned one evening with the necessary passport-sized photo, Pakpa Kyap told him the picture was not good enough, to come back the following morning with a better one. Badzra Trinley was well aware of Pakpa Kyap's suspicions, so at 5:00 a.m. the following morning, in violation of his bail agreement, he went directly to the Public Security Bureau section that issues identification cards, and by 6:00 a.m. was on his way to the capital. A week later, he went back to Labrang.
After Badzra Trinley returned, his cousins and friends were quick to bring him up to date, telling him that once he was gone, Pakpa Kyap came repeatedly to the monastery to inquire about him. They also told him that when Jamyang, Badzra Trinley's friend who had helped arrange bail, returned from a home visit, he was repeatedly questioned until he told Pakpa Kyap, "If you don't trust me, put me in prison in Badzra Trinley's place."
The very next day, July 30, 1994, I went to see Pakpa Kyap at his home, but his father told me he had gone to the capital [of Gannan prefecture]. I went back to the monastery, but I didn't want to get my friends in trouble, so the next day at 5:00 a.m., I went to Pakpa Kyap's office. He wasn't there either. Another officerasked my name and then told me to wait. About when it was getting dark, some officers came from Gannan. About 9:00 p.m. they put me in a jeep and took me to the detention center in Gannan, about seventy miles away. When we got there, at 10:30 p.m., they took me right to the interrogation room. They put me in a metal chair, handcuffed me, and for two hours, two officers questioned me about why I went to Lhasa and what I did there.
There were many Tibetan prisoners at the detention center, and the officers were afraid news of my arrest might leak out, so they took me to a Public Security Bureau guest house for the night. My room had three beds. They handcuffed me to the middle one.
The next afternoon, Badzra Trinley, with his hands and feet bound in chains, was transferred to a detention center 150 kilometers away in Linxia Huizu Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu province. The facility was about ten kilometers from the center of town. "I stayed there for four months, and no one knew I was there. I was the only Tibetan." Again, Badzra Trinley had to remove his monk's robe and again the officials used his own money, 200 renminbi (U.S.$28), to buy a track suit and a bowl for food. Badzra Trinley described his first fifteen days at the facility, a time when he was interrogated by PSB officers from his home county:
I was badly treated. The torture started at 8:00 a.m. and went on until 9:00 p.m. I was removed to an empty cell. I was cuffed in the over-the-shoulder way. It destroyed my shoulder joint. Two wooden rods were placed behind each of my knees and another on the front. Then they were tied together and I was told to kneel. Electric shocks were applied all over, my mouth, my face; and I was kicked and punched everywhere. They put wood slabs between my legs and made me kneel for hours. I still have marks from the handcuffs; some scars have faded.
I was there during the coldest month of the year. Every morning before the sun rose, I was taken to an empty cell and told to strip. Then they kept throwing buckets of icy water on me. I couldn't bear to gasp. I couldn't even breathe properly after awhile. Sometimes I blacked out. Sometimes they took me to a fire to keep me from fainting. Sometimes they hit me all over my body with a sharp thin bamboo stick. My whole body became like a chicken, blue with patches of white.
All during the sessions, Badzra Trinley's interrogators made it clear that they knew about his independence activities, and it would be best if he confessed. He was told, for example, "You painted slogans during Kalacakra. We have observed this through scientific methods. And you wrote political posters when you were in college. We compared the handwriting with your textbooks." They went on, "Can you yourself beat the Chinese Communist Party and bring independence to Tibet? Chiang Kai-shek tried with thousands of troops and arms and failed to beat the Communist Party."
Badzra Trinley said he told them that he was only one person, but that "If we look into the history of China, dynasties changed. These were not natural events, but they happened because people changed their minds. The same thing will happen to the Party."
After four months, Badzra Trinley was transferred back to the detention center in Gannan, where he remained for the next two years and four months, in a special section for political prisoners. For one week, he was interrogated around the clock. The questions hardly changed; the beatings and the taunts persisted. "Will the Dalai Lama appoint you king of Tibet in an independent Tibet?" his torturers kept asking.
After the first week, Badzra Trinley shared a prison cell with ten others. The days were spent in idleness except for those prisoners who, thanks to good relations with prison guards, were called on to wash clothes or perform other personal services. There was no exercise time, nor did prisoners ever get to go outdoors.
The main charge against Badzra Trinley was that he was a spy for the Tibetan "government-in-exile," having distributed independence literature in 1994 at a Kalacakra initiation. "There was little chance I could deny it or deny that I had put up posters in the monastery. They had checked my handwriting."
He was finally sentenced in late 1996 to two years and seven months in prison on charges of counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement. He also received two years' subsequent deprivation of political rights. He was released two days before his term was up and two and a half years after his bail was revoked. During the more than two years before he was sentenced, his father received permission for only one visit.
Before his trial, Badzra Trinley had been interrogated by two branches of the Public Security Bureau and by the procuracy. When the procuracy handed up the indictment, he was told to accept the charges, which he did even though he believed in his innocence. Although Badzra Trinley reads Chinese, he pretended not to, so all pre-trial documents were read out in Chinese and orally translated. Badzra Trinley was offered a lawyer approximately one month before trial, but he refused, asking instead for an interpreter. The closed trial lasted three hours, after which the judges left the room for ten minutes, then announced the sentence and asked if he had anything to say. When he tried to object to the charges, they said they had scientific proof of his guilt. Badzra Trinley decided rather than run the risk of a longer sentence, he would not appeal.
Badzra Trinley returned to Labrang after he was released. He said he had no place else to go and the authorities did not object. He stayed almost a year but found the atmosphere very unpleasant.
People were afraid of me. They were frightened to speak with me. People didn't want to get close to me. My friends were even afraid to bring me food when I was in prison. Once, some friends did come with food, but the Public Security Bureau asked them, "What is your relation to Badzra Trinley." A friend of mine got the highest marks but they [the monks at the college] weren't allowed to give him first place. I told my brothers not to ask me anything. I wanted to protect them. And I was constantly harassed by the local police.
Finally, in early 1998, Badzra Trinley left for India. He did not say a word to his friends or his family, because they would have insisted on helping him.
A few days later I reached Lhasa. I was with a friend. We didn't have any I.D. so we went to the Public Security Bureau. My hair was a bit long, so they didn't know I was a monk. But then the PSB got a phone call from Amdo telling them not to give us I.Ds. So we fled through Dram. By then we were five people. Two were my friends. At 3:30 one afternoon, we were at a place in Tibet with a lot of soldiers. They started shooting. One of my friends got arrested. I went back to Dram and gave 2,500 renminbi [approximately U.S.$355] through an acquaintance, and my friend was released.
On April 19, 1998, Badzra Trinley arrived in Dharamsala and soon was at work at the Norbulinga Institute, a facility dedicated to preserving Tibetan culture.