Meet Phuntsok Wangchuk: An Interview Exercept

When we interviewed Phuntsok Wangchuk in 2008, he was the General Secretary of The Gu-Chu-Sum Movement of Tibet.  Phuntsok was born in Tibet, just south of Lhasa, in 1973, and was arrested on June 15, 1994 when seven Chinese policemen burst into his boarding-school room at 3 a.m.  Two other students and two other teachers were also arrested.  They were charged with posting pro-indpendence flyers in his village, a charge that Wangchuk freely acknowledged.  The two students were held for two weeks, and the two teachers for two months.  Wangchuk was sentenced to five years in Drapchi Prison, the most feared prison in the Chinese penal system.

Like most Tibetan youths, Wangchuk was educated within the Chinese system, and he was forced to learn the Chinese version of Tibetan history.  When he reached the age of sixteen, however, he met a Tibetan teacher who began to instruct him in the accurate version of Tibet and China’s troubled relationship, and this in effect politicized the young Wangchuk and led him to take action in the only way he know how:  by posting flyers advocating for Tibetan independence.

An insight into Wangchuk’s character can be found in his online autobiography. After being in solitary confinement, and interrogated extensively, he was put on reduced rations.  He writes:

After that day, I was only given two tingmos (steamed buns) and one cup of boiled water a day.  The only blanket that I had was also taken away.  This experience made me realize to some degree what Milarepa (Buddhist saint who meditated without any food or clothes in the mountains) must have endured during his meditation, and I felt a deep-rooted faith in Milarepa well up in me.

Clearly a person of strong character, Wangchuk evidenced his resolve and strength in our interview with him, which took place on the roof of the Gu-Chu-Sum Movement’s offices in Dharamsala.