Tibetan woman, who spent 27 years in Chinese prisons, dies at Mcleodganj

Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, August 3

The oldest surviving Tibetan, who spent 27 years under custody of the Chinese government, passed away at Mcleodganj on Monday.

Ama Adhe Tapontsang was 92 and reportedly died due to natural causes.

Born in 1928 to a nomadic family in the Kham region of eastern Tibet, she joined the Tibetan resistance to fight the Chinese invasion of her country that began in 1950.

In 1954, when her first child was year old and she was pregnant with the second, her husband died of poisoning right in front of her. She then joined the Tibetan resistance.

In 1958, she was arrested and separated from her two young children. Ama Adhe was subjected to interrogation and torture, and send to re-education camps. She was sent for forced labour where she experienced extreme deprivation, torture, and rape during 27 years of imprisonment. She was released in 1985.

She fled to India in 1987, and made Mcleodganj, exile seat of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan administration, her home. She released her life story in a book ‘Ama Adhe: The Voice that Remembers: The Heroic Story of a Woman’s Fight to Free Tibet’, published in 1997.

The book describes the inhuman conditions that she and countless others were forced to endure after the Chinese invasion, and the subsequent brutalities Tibetans had to endure, including the destruction of Buddhist monasteries and the implementation of policies resulting in mass starvation.

Cremation ceremony for Ama Adhe will be held on Wednesday morning in Mcleodganj.