Palden Gyatso (1933, Panam,
Tibet – 30 November 2018,
Dharamshala,
India,
Standard Tibetan: དཔལ་ལྡན་རྒྱ་མཚོ་, romanized: dpal ldan rgya mtsho ) was a
Tibetan Buddhist monk. Arrested for protesting during the
Chinese invasion of Tibet, he spent 33 years in Chinese prisons and labor camps, where he was extensively tortured, and served the longest term of any Tibetan political prisoner. After his release in 1992 he fled to Dharamsala in North India, in exile. He was still a practicing monk and became a political activist, traveling the world publicizing the cause of Tibet up until his death in 2018. His autobiography Fire Under the Snow is also known as The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk. He was the subject of the 2008 documentary film Fire Under the Snow.
Life
Palden Gyatso was born in 1933 in the Tibetan village of Panam, located on the
Nyangchu River between
Gyantse and
Shigatse. A few days after his birth a search party of high lamas arrived from
Drag Riwoche Monastery and declared him one of the candidates for the reincarnation of a high lama who had died the year before.[1] In 1943, he entered
Gadong Monastery as a novice monk. During the Chinese invasion, he became a fully ordained monk of the
Gelug school. At the invitation of the
14th Dalai Lama, he moved to
Drepung Monastery near
Lhasa to complete his studies.[2][3][4]
Palden Gyatso was arrested in June 1959 by Chinese officials for demonstrating during the 10 March
1959 Tibetan uprising.[5] He spent the following 33 years in different Chinese prisons and
laogai[6] or
"reform through labor" camps, the longest term of any Tibetan political prisoner.[7][8]"He was forced to participate in barbarous re-education classes and He was tortured by various methods, which included being beaten with a club ridden with nails, shocked by an electric probe, which scarred his tongue and caused his teeth to fall out, whipped while being forced to pull an iron plow, and starved."[9] leading to irreversible physical damage.[10][11][12] During this time, he continued to abide by the
Dharma, the
Buddha's teachings. Released in 1992, he escaped to
Dharamsala in India, home of the
Tibetan government in exile.
In Dharamsala, he wrote his autobiography, Fire Under The Snow in Tibetan, since translated into many other languages, which inspired the 2008 film, also named Fire Under The Snow.[13][14][15][16]The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk was published in 1998. The
Dalai Lama noted in the foreword that "His sense of the justice of our cause and his indignation at what has been done to so many Tibetans are so urgent that he has not rested. Having for years resisted Communist Chinese efforts to conceal and distort it, he has seized the opportunity to tell the world the truth about Tibet.”[17]