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Tibet victims to testify in Spain court
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NewsByte on 17 May, 2008 02:49:03
 
By RAMESH RAMACHANDRAN
New Delhi, May 17: Certain victims of the genocide in Tibet will testify in a
Spanish court on May 19. The victims, some of whom live in India, have had to
travel to Madrid to personally appear before the judge, Mr Ismael Moreno, after
India refused to set up a rogatory commission that would have allowed the
Tibetans to testify here.
One of the victims who will testify is Mr J. Monlam, assistant director of the
Dharamsala-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) and a
former monk from the Drepung monastery in Tibet. TCHRD is the first Tibetan
non-governmental human rights organisation to be established in exile in India.
It was founded in 1996. Mr Monlam was tortured after the March 1989 crackdown in
Tibet, when Chinese President Hu Jintao was the secretary of the Chinese
Communist Party in Tibet.
Mr Monlam hoped his testimony, and that of his fellow Tibetans, will impel the
international community to take a stand on protection of the human rights of the
Tibetan people. "I hope our testimony and the investigation of the case of Tibet
in the Spanish courts will help to clarify the events that have taken place
against our people. We trust this case will contribute towards the international
community’s finally taking a stand for human rights, which come before
commercial interests, and that China, host of the Olympic Games, will respect
the fundamental rights of the Tibetan people," he has said.
Also testifying will be Mr P. Gyatso, another monk from the Drepung monastery,
which is one of the monasteries to be hit by the recent unrest in Tibet. He is
the author of the book Fire Under The Snow. He was arrested in 1959 for
organising demonstrations by a group of monks and spent 33 years in prison.
During his imprisonment he witnessed the deaths of Tibetan prisoners as a result
of torture and forced labour.
Mr P. Gyatso is happy a court will hear him out. "After more than 50 years’
genocide against my people, in which more than a million Tibetans have died as a
result of the military occupation, a court of justice is at last going to listen
to our suffering. A few years ago when I was being tortured in prison in Tibet,
my dream was that one day a law court would hear about the horrors endured by
thousands of my brothers."
Sources told this newspaper that the "impossibility" of victims living in exile
in India being able to testify here has led Mr J. Monlam and Mr P. Gyatso to
testify before the judge, Mr Ismael Moreno, at the Audiencia Nacional (Spain’s
high court) on Monday.
The Spanish judge has called two other victims to testify before him: Mr
Bhagdro, a former monk from the Ganden monastery, and Mr Tenzin Tsundue, a poet,
writer and Tibetan freedom activist.