Three policewomen inside the room - Pelmo remembered their names as Pema, Chungdak and Mei-yi - ordered her to remove her clothes. Slowly, Pelmo took off her chuba, the traditional Tibetan woman's dress. The policewomen ordered her to remove her underwear. ``I felt deep shame, deep embarrassment,'' she said; she had never taken off her clothes in view of any man - much less 30 of them staring at her through the windows.
First, Pelmo was ordered to lie on her stomach, she said. Two police beat her with knotted sticks, she said. Then a policewoman repeatedly rammed the stick into Pelmo's vagina.
``You will not get freedom, you will not get independence, not even in your dreams,'' Pelmo recalled the policewoman scolding her.
``It was so painful,'' Pelmo said. ``I was crawling, rolling on the floor.''
Immediately afterward, Pelmo said, the policewoman thrust the stick into Pelmo's mouth. Then she inserted an electric cattle prod into Pelmo's vagina and rectum, she said.
``I became senseless,'' said Pelmo. ``I felt like a drunk; I couldn't even walk.''
Police carried Pelmo into her cell.
Choedon, meanwhile, was led toward the room with the three big windows. She said she felt great foreboding. As she was led in, she saw two police carrying Pelmo. ``She seemed unconscious,'' Choedon recalled.
The prisoners on the other side of the windows were leering at her, she said. Inside, three policewomen ordered Choedon to take off her clothes and lie on her stomach, she said. ``They beat me from head to toe with huge sticks,'' Choedon recalled. ``The thieves and robbers [looking through the windows] were shouting and laughing, `You didn't beat her enough on the legs! Beat her there!'
``After they beat me over the whole body, about four times, I could hardly feel anything.''
Then she felt an electric cattle prod rolling over her body. An officer stuck the prod, electricity surging, into Choedon's rectum. ``I couldn't believe the pain,'' Choedon said. ``It was as if my heart was broken.''
She said police threw water onto her and pulled her to her feet.
``I was standing near the wall,'' Choedon said, ``when they put the stick in my vagina.''
Thupten Yonten, then 20 - the fifth nun in the group - said that she, too, was sexually assaulted that day by police using electric cattle prods and sticks. She said she did not want to describe the details of the assault.
The next morning, policemen visited each of the nuns in their cells. They asked each one the same question.
``They asked me if I had changed my mind about wanting Tibet's independence,'' Pelmo recalled. ``I said no.''
Pelmo said police dragged her into another cell. One of them beat her with a stick until it broke, she said. Another police officer used a belt. A third twisted her arms and legs behind her, as though trying to break them, she said.
One officer asked a question: ``Have you changed your mind about wanting Tibetan independence?'' Pelmo said no.
Pelmo said police dragged her to yet another room.
Again, she said, she was tortured with electric cattle prods and sticks. Meanwhile, in other rooms, the other nuns also were tortured, they said.
When the nuns were released from jail, they were unable to return to their nunnery because of Chinese policy; they made the trek to India in 1989 and 1990.
Litch, the doctor, found that the nuns' physical and psychological conditions were consistent with their stories of torture. He examined four of the nuns; Yonten was in Nepal at the time.
Today Kunsang suffers from serious depression because of the torture, Litch found. And Choedon worries that she will not see her parents ``until Tibet is free.''
Philadelphia Online -- The Philadelphia Inquirer, International -- Copyright Sunday, December 8, 1996
