Engineer. Raised the Tibetan flag for a day.
To Tibetans, the concrete box in a prison cell is known as a ``Chinese coffin.'' Chinese call it a jinbi.
For 22 hours a day over a three-month period, this box the size of a coffin confined a 40-year-old Tibetan man named Drablha (like many Tibetans, he has only one name). He was confined to the box while imprisoned for the crime - in Chinese-occupied Tibet - of raising the Tibetan national flag one day in 1988.
During the two hours a day that he was taken out of the box by Chinese police, Drablha said in an interview in India, he was often hung by his thumbs and beaten with iron bars.
Drablha, a former engineer for the Chinese government, spent his life in Tibet but was educated in Beijing. He was jailed for 11 months. He believes he was stuck in the box for so long because he was unwilling to say what the Chinese police wanted to hear: that Chinese rule in Tibet was good for Tibetans.
He decided to raise a flag for Tibetan independence because he discovered, through his work, that the Chinese used Tibet as a colony. ``I'd have to design a bridge to a forest, or a mine,'' Drablha recalled. ``The Chinese always calculated in advance what they'd get out of Tibet.''
Inside the box, he said, ``there wasn't even a hair of light. I was in there day and night, and I couldn't tell when it was day, when it was night.''
It was only as wide as Drablha and barely as long, with an iron door at one end. Some air could enter, Drablha said, but breathing was difficult.
The only thing inside was a small bucket. By contorting himself, Drablha used it as his toilet.
``I couldn't move in there, and it was very hot; I'd be sweating,'' Drablha said. ``I'd rather be tortured than stay in there. Sometimes I wished they'd take me out and execute me.''
He said that most of the time, he meditated, reciting the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum of the patron deity of Tibet, who symbolizes compassion. ``I dreamed that I was moving, always moving, in a jeep, going to China.''
When he was taken out, Drablha said, he was hung - either by his thumbs, or upside down, his feet near the ceiling.
``They'd suspend me for 15 minutes, then take me down, then put me back up because they'd say I wasn't confessing'' to advocating independence for Tibet, Drablha said. ``Sometimes I'd be naked while suspended. Then they'd ask me: `Where is your independence for Tibet?' If I didn't answer, they'd spray me with a hose. It was winter and the water was very cold.''
He remembers the name of the Chinese policeman who tortured him: Xiao Li.
``Xiao Li twisted my arm behind my back so that it made a noise - Crack! - and he pulled it off the track'' - out of its socket, Drablha said.
In India, Drablha pulled up his sleeves to reveal his elbows. The right elbow is out-of-joint, at a different angle than the left. ``This is the most I can straighten it,'' he said, bringing his arm to a 45-degree angle.
An X-ray of Drablha's arms shows that his elbows are at odd angles, according to Ellie McDougall, a New Zealand doctor who examined him in India in June. She also said that imprints on his fingers showed that he had been locked in finger cuffs. His thumbs had line-thin horizontal scars at the joints.
McDougall also said Drablha had scars from cigarette burns on his legs. X-rays of Drablha's hands suggest that his thumbs were subjected to unusual pressure, McDougall said.
During the examination, Drablha pulled up his right pants leg to his knee to reveal five dark round circles, each about a half-inch in diameter. ``Police did this while interrogating me,'' he said.
Each day, Drablha said, police opened the metal door once or twice to give him a small piece of bread and black tea. He said he was always hungry.
Earlier this year, Drablha and his wife decided to leave Tibet and flee to India. They made the trek through the Himalayan mountains. Now Drablha is hoping to find a job - any job.
Story by Inquirer - Inside Tibet
