Fire Under The Snow: Testimony of a Tibetan Prisoner

Incredible story of suffering, perseverance and potential of a human spirit. I was very inspired how after decades in prison the freedom fighters of Tibet could not longer be intimidated by torture of death. They had seen it all. In the end, they won and the oppressors could see that torture was no longer working. I loved the following bit form the book:"For those who use brute force, there is nothing more insulting than a victim’s refusal to acknowledge their power. The human body can bear immesurable pain and yet recover. Wounds can heal. But once your spirit is broken, everything falls apart. So we did not allow ourselves to feel dejected. We drew strength from our conviction and, above all, from our belief that we were frighting for justice and for the freedom of our country."

This is a really excellent book. It was advertised as Very Good Condition, but when it arrived in relatively poor condition, Awesome Books were very quick to put this right for me with a full refund.

I read this book many years ago. It is an amazing book. It is one of the books that I always wanted to keep and have on my book shelve, but lost it after a recent house move, so I sent for another copy to replace it. Highly recommend.

A story of hope and endurance under extraordinary living conditions under the prison regime of the Chinese. The Tibetan people are still living under the illegal occupation by the Chinese.

Palden Gyatso relates his fascinating story of his life, as a Tibetan monk and his 33 years in a hellish Chinese Communist prison, where he was, starved, subjected to horrific tortures, leading to irreversible physical damage and barbaric reeducation classes.Born in the Tibetan village of Panam in 1933 he entered the Gadong monastery at the age of ten, and during the Chinese invasion of Tibet he was fully ordained as a monk.Arrested by the Chinese, along with thousands of monks and nuns,during his hellish incarceration from 1959 to 1992, he saw the destruction by the Chinese Communists of the Tibetan people and their culture and religion.Monasteries were destroyed, books burned and thousands of Tibetans arrested and executed by the Commuinist Chinese determined to destroy everything of Tibetan identity and culture, and replace it with Chinese Communism.Of the group of monks Palden was ordained with he was the only one that survived.By the time Palden was arrested the Chinese had woven a strangling web around Tibet, and the hapless Tibetan people could do nothing about it.Palden describes the barbarous "struggle sessions" in which thousands were murdered or beaten to death, the Chinese propaganda that turned reality inside out, claming they were "freeing"' the Tibetan people from "Feudalism" and forcing them to abandon " the four olds "- their culture, customs, habits and thoughts.Ii is horrific to read of the Communist Chinese prison methods.On a brief leave, during 1983, shortly before being re arrested, Palden describes the sight of thousands of Tibetan children starving to death as a result of the famine deliberately created by the Chinese to subjugate the Tibetan people,Many children from the wrong "class backgrounds" were deliberately starved to death by the Communist authorities.Thousands of arrested nuns were stripped, humiliated and often raped by the Chinese Communists.China and it's apologists claim that China introduced progress to Tibet and freed it's people from "feudalism".It does not matter to them that the Tibetan people did not want any part of Communist 'progress' and were happy with the life they lived before the Chinese invasion and genocide.After his release in 1992, Palden went into exile and swore to bear testament to the crimes of Communist China against the Tibetan people.

This is the compelling story of the life of Palden Gyatso, of which over 30 years was spent in Chinese prisons. It is also the story of China's invasion, occupation, and transformation of Tibet, albeit mainly from behind bars.It reminds me of Primo Levi's 'If This Is A Man', the account of his time in the Nazi concentration camps. Gyatso suffers because of his religious beliefs, as well as his refusal to 'reform' to communist ways.What is most amazing is the apparent belief of the Chinese authorities that a culture could simply be 'educated' into a different way of living; that those who resisted could, by brute force, be persuaded to change their beliefs. But then, a similar process of 'education' is no doubt going on in the world now, as nations try to 'democratise' countries they occupy.Unlike Primo Levi, however, Gyatso's book seems to be missing an element of self-reflection. In under 240 pages you get a strong sense of events and terrible cruelty, but only briefly does he mention that he too had to denounce his fellow prisoners. Nowhere does he address the problems of the feudal system that the Chinese so hated. I get the impression that in trying to make a case for a free Tibet, the story has been trimmed of some of the nuances that might have made it less a story, and more enlightening. Having said that, it certainly is an eye-opener, and inspires you to find out more about the recent histories of Tibet, China and Asia in general.

A real eye opener. Brutal, tear-rending revelations of how one portion of humanity is treating another, told with a steady and enlightened perspective. A very valuable piece of biography that every public library would benefit from holding. Read this book and you will be an instant convert to the Tibetan cause. Don't be surprised if you want to pass it on to others as soon as you finish the last page.