By Tsering Dhundup
DHARAMSHALA, June 25: Phuntsok Wangchuk, a former Tibetan political prisoner, passed away on June 20, 2024, at the age of 51, in New York, U.S, according to reliable sources. He was sentenced to five years in prison on June 15, 1994, for protesting and distributing papers on freedom and human rights in Tibet under Chinese occupation. During his imprisonment, he participated in the 1998 Drapchi Prison Protest.
Phuntsok Wangchuk was born in 1973 in Nedong County and was a former student at Tibet University in Lhasa. In 2000, he went into exile in India. From 2004 to 2010, he served as the secretary of “GU CHU SUM,” an organization based in India that works to promote recognition and respect for the fundamental rights of Tibetans and strengthen the Tibetan freedom movement through research, advocacy, and service to Tibetan prisoners of conscience.
The year 1998 marked the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Ironically, in Drapchi Prison the same year, Chinese prison guards and Public Security Bureau (PSB) officials violated all human rights norms with the use of brutal force on Tibetan prisoners. On 4 May 1998, the unarmed prisoners were indiscriminately fired upon, beaten, tortured, and solitarily confined and their prison sentences extended for having called out for freedom.
Drapchi Prison is one of three officially recognised prisons in Tibet. The others are Lhasa Prison and Powo Tramo in Nyingtri Prefecture. However, the actual number of prisons and detention centres in Tibet is much higher than the official figures suggest. A total number of 27 deaths and sentence extensions of 47 political prisoners have been recorded since 1987 in Drapchi Prison alone.
The prison officials employ extensive torture methods to extract information from the prisoners as well as to curb their political sentiments and activism in the future. Several deaths have occurred while being tortured whereas others have gradually succumbed to their injuries resulting from the torture. Apart from numerous incidents of death in detention, many have died with the prison torture haunting their memories and hampering their health, after their release.
