By Ngawang C. Drakmargyapon
Phayul Special Correspondent
Geneva, June 12 – Phuntsok Nyidron plans to arrive tomorrow morning at Zurich Airport and is expected to seek political asylum in Switzerland, according to informed sources in Geneva and Washington D.C. The sources also add that it was a personal wish of Phuntsok Nyidron to be able to live in a country like Switzerland which hosts the largest Tibetan population in Europe.
Phuntsok Nyidron, a former political prisoner of Tibet was released on “medical parole” in February 2004 after intense international pressure and this March traveled to USA to receive medical treatment. She was arrested in October 1989 after participating in a peaceful demonstration in the Tibetan capital and subsequently suffered 15 years of imprisonment.
Last month, in New York after receiving the Reebok Human Rights Award which she won in 1995, Phuntsok Nyidron said: “When the Reebok Human Rights Foundation announced my name as one of the recipients of the award for 1995, I was in prison in Tibet. Through over 15 years in prison, I was not at all aware of the tremendous international concern about the plight of Tibetan political prisoners like myself, as symbolized by the award. I am just an ordinary Tibetan. The actions that I took only reflected the prevalent feeling among the Tibetan people in Tibet about Chinese authorities’ attitude towards our spiritual and temporal leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama and our people. I raised my voice, as did many of my fellow Tibetans, against China’s occupation of my country and denial of freedom of our people.”
Phuntsok Nyidron and thirteen other political prisoners were popularly known as the “singing nuns” of Tibet’s notorious Drapchi Prison, on the outskirts of the Tibetan capital. Two from the group, Rinzin Choekyi, who served 12 years in prison, and Lhundrup Zangmo, who served nine years, recently arrived in Dharamsala after escaping from Tibet. Ngawang Sangdrol, another member of this group was released in October 2002 and now works as a human rights analyst for the International Campaign for Tibet in Washington, D.C.
According to International Campaign for Tibet’s website, the Chinese authorities stated that the 14 nuns had “recorded reactionary ‘Tibetan independence’ songs in an attitude of counter-revolutionary arrogance” and said that “their attitude to confession was abominable” (Lhasa City Intermediate People’s Court, Tibet Autonomous Region Criminal Sentencing Document, 1993, published in English by ICT here).
A week after her arrival in Switzerland, Phuntsok Nyidron is expected to address a Tibetan rally planned by Tibetan organisations in Switzerland and Liechtenstein before the United Nations in Geneva as the new UN Human Rights Council opens its first session on 19 June.
Ngawang C. Drakmargyapon can be reached at drakgya@yahoo.com
