Marie Claire "Women of the World" September 1997

In a world exclusive the Dalai Lama's sister talks to Marie Claire about why there are 5 Hollywood movies being made on Tibet. She also talks about what the films do not cover- why women are forced to have abortions and be sterilized. By: Kate Saunders

The 14th Dalai Lama was two years old when he was recognized as a "Living Buddha". His younger sister, Jetsun Pema, was often told the story of how he was discover, in a remote province in Tibet, one winter afternoon in 1937. A group of travelers arrived at the family home and asked Pema's mother for permission to use her cooking fire. Her little boy, Lhamo, climbed into the lap of the travelers' servant and scrutinized the rosary around his neck. "I want this rosary," he said. The strangers glanced at one another. The necklace had belonged to the 13th Dalai Lama. "You may have it if you can guess who I am," the servant replied. To the men's shock, the boy identified them as a high-ranking Buddhist monk and his entourage.

The men then showed the child a number of objects, some of which were replicas. Without fail, Lhamo chose only the Dalai Lama's possessions. They found on his body marks traditionally associated with the Dalai Lamas: large ears, streaks like tiger stripes on his legs, certain moles on his torso. And Pema's mother recalled a dream she had had on the night before Lhamo's birth, of two blue dragons greeting her.

"From then on, my family would never be the same," says Pema, now a 58-year-old married woman. "We were transformed from poor farmers into Tibet's most privileged family."

At the age of four, the Dalai Lama was taken across the mountains to be greeted with awe and reverence by thousands in Lhasa, Tibet's capital. He was formally installed as the spiritual leader and absolute ruler of Tibet three years later, when Pema was 5. She and her sister Tsering Dolma remember their brother's lonely life in a cold dark bedroom on the seventh floor of the thousand-roomed Potala Palace, with an entourage of elderly monks rather than children his own age:

"He was not allowed to see our parents very much," Pema says. "They lived in special quarters near the Palace. My own relationship with His Holiness was very formal, very grown-up. I was usually very bored when my mother took me to visit him. His Holiness talked much more easily to adults the to other children. He had been groomed, in this way since he was a toddler. The only interesting thing about the visits were sweets from an attendant!"

In 1949, when Dalai Lama was 14, the family's life changed again. That year, 40,000 Chinese People's Liberation Army soldiers invaded Tibet, easily overpowering the poorly equipped Tibetan army. A military occupation was established that has since resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Tibetans through torture, starvation, or execution. They also implemented their birth control policies in Tibet, resulting in brutal forced abortions and sterilization's. Tibetan language and culture were- and are- threatened by the destruction of thousands of monasteries and nunneries, the nation's traditional centers of education. "I was sent to a convent school on India, while my brother and parents remained in Tibet," says Pema. "I was terribly worried about them."

"His Holiness then faced the most agonizing decision of his life: whether to stay in Tibet and endanger his life or to escape the country and the people he loved. My mother and his advisors finally persuaded him to leave."

On March 17, 1959, the Dalai Lama disguised himself as an ordinary Tibetan and headed south, covered by a fortuitous dust storm. I took tow days for the Chinese to realize he's left. Then PLA troops massacred thousands of the Tibetans who had gathered at the "god king's"" summer palace to protect him.

"When we heard that His Holiness has safely reached India, our grief at the deaths in Tibet was mixed with joy," says Pema. "For days, I had been unable to sleep or eat." In exile, the while family-five brothers, two sisters and their mother- was reunited.

"In exile, my relationship with His Holiness changed," adds Pema. "He felt free for the first time. We became extremely good friends."

The Dalai Lama now lives near his sister Pema in Dharamsala, India, which has become a haven for Tibetan refugees and the center of this government in exile. He meets with all newly escaped Tibetans and travels tirelessly around the world campaigning of the Tibetan cause. Pema recalls:

"It was His Holiness who suggested that I help my elder sister Tsering look after the Tibetan refugee children who were arriving almost daily in Dharamsala. The trek they make through the mountains can take several months. There are passes of 20,000 feet, often deep in snow. Most Tibetans are ill-equipped for this- they wear gym shoes and carry only a small amount of food. Many die on the way."

Pema became President of the Tibetan Children's Village, which has branches throughout India and more than 11,000 children under care. "Some are orphans whose parents were killed by the Chinese. Others have been sent by their parents across the mountains to seek a better life," she explains. "Children who come to us have lost everything- their homes and their families. Sometimes they have fingers or toes missing from frostbite. We try to create an atmosphere that his as loving and supportive as possible."

Pema's three children from her first marriage were brought up at the Tibetan Children's Village: "the school is like a huge family, and we all look after each other." She has married again, years after the death of her first husband.

"In 1980, I returned to Tibet to lead an official delegation," she says. "I was horrified by what I witnessed and spent the whole trip in tears. I met one woman whose husband had been put into prison by the Chinese. She had no money to feed her children. So, unable to bear the sight of their tiny, shriveled bodies, she began to feed them a soup made from her own blood. Gradually, they gained enough energy to walk."

Pema has a particular concern for the plight of women in Tibet. The Chinese have implemented their harsh birth control policy there; it includes brutal forced abortions and sterilization of Tibetan "minority" women. Married women between the ages of 25 and 35 are allowed one to two children- fewer in urban areas, more in less populated regions.

Choekyi, 48, who fled Tibet with her husband four years ago and now lives in Dharamsala, recalls what happened to her when she exceeded her village's three child limit:

"When I was pregnant with my fourth child, Chinese officials kept coming to my house, pressuring me to have an abortion. I kept refusing. I wanted my baby, and I knew what Chinese clinics were like. In the clinic near my home, ten to twenty forced abortions were carried out daily, in terrible conditions."

In China, it is legal to administer abdominal injections to women who are nine months pregnant in order to induce abortion and to kill infants still in the birth canal. Some Tibetans report that a relative or friend has delivered a healthy baby only to have a nurse kill it with a lethal injection. One Tibetan man trained to carry out abortions and sterilization's has admitted that no hygienic precautions are generally taken except for washing the instruments with boiled water.

"Two women came back with infections a few days after their abortions. One of them was paralyzed," said the man, who is now in exile and asked not to be named. "The Chinese also forced women to use IUD's. Often IUD insertions are also followed by infections."

Choekyi gave birth to her child, and immediately Chinese officials began to pressure her into a sterilization: "As a punishment for having a fourth child, we had to pay a fee to local authorities, which we could scarcely afford. I was worried; I knew that squads roamed the rural areas to sterilize women like me. If a woman refused, officials would ransack her house and take everything of value. If the household was poor, they'd take the windows or furniture. I resisted the officials until they told me my husband would go to jail."

Tibetan sterilization's are often carried out by the "cut and tie" method. A point is cut along the fallopian tubes and then each end is cut and tied together. Choekyi remembers:

"The hospital was a small room with four beds. The spinal anesthetic they gave me wasn't effective. I could still feel the knife cutting into me.

"I could hear other women screaming. Later one of them told me that the anesthetic had had no effect and she had felt everything. The operation took about half and hour. It felt a thousand times longer. I was kept in the hospital for three days. Before I left, I was given a bill for food and use of the bed.

"I was lucky. Sometimes officials carry out the operation in the woman's home, with basic and unhygienic equipment."

After the operation, Choekyi was no longer able to work in the fields with her husband. "I felt weak all the time and could not afford any medicine," she says. "Even now, I still have intense pains in my womb, and can't walk very far. But at least I'm alive. Two friends of mine died from pelvic infections after the same operation."

Choekyi and her husband decided to flee Tibet. They sent their children into exile in India. Then- after being arrested and released at the border four times-they paid a guide to take them across the mountains to join their children.

"The journey was a nightmare. My stomach and body became bloated, and I could scarcely walk," says Choekyi. When they arrived in India, she adds, they had run out of money and could barely afford to eat: "The first thing I bought was a kilo of oranges to take to the children." Finally, she and her husband were reunited with those children for whom they had paid so high a price.

"Often, women who face forced abortion or sterilization will try to escape from Tibet," says Pema. "Sometimes, a woman will escape while she is pregnant so that her child will be brought up on Indian soil and can be educated as a Tibetan without Chinese influence."

Pema understands Tibetan women's determination to preserve their families and culture. She herself was brought up in a Tibet free of the Chinese presence- a Tibet which no longer exists today. Her own childhood memories were vividly evoked two years ago, when she was asked by Jean-Jacques Annaud to play the part of her own mother in Seven Years in Tibet.

"I asked His Holiness if I should do this, and he said I should go ahead," she says. "He felt that the film might increase awareness about the plight of Tibetans. I told the director that I had no acting experience, but he said that I should just think about my mother and do as she would. I remembered her informal wisdom, her kindness, and the way she talked to people, and I tried to capture this in my acting.

"Somehow different parts of my life came together during the making of Seven Years. I grew closer to my family and gained a deeper insight into events that shaped their lives. My respect for my mother increased, and so did my understanding of myself."

In Martin Scorsese's Kundun, Pema's 30-years-old daughter, Tencho, plays the role of Pema's mother. "Tencho felt very sad to play her grandmother and she understood the suffering my mother endured in a way she never had before. She even played a scene where she was pregnant with me!" says Pema.

For her own acting experience, Pema had the help f Bad Pitt, who played the lead role of the Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer:

"He was very supportive. When I forgot my lines, he would always prompt me. Between scenes, he wanted to know all about Buddhism and about His Holiness."

The closing scenes of Seven Years in Tibet are of the Chinese invasion. "Everyone was crying when we filmed this" Pema reveals. "Brad Pitt, all the cameramen , and all the Tibetans. To many of the young Tibetan actors, who had been born in exile and never knew what their parents suffered, doing this film was a real emotional awakening.

"One of the most powerful aspects of the filming for the Tibetans was working with Chinese actors. Most Tibetans have a very strong feeling against the Chinese. But during filming, we made strong friendships with them."

Another powerful experience for Pema was reliving the death of her father, Choekyong Tsering, who died when she was 7. "My father adored me, every morning when I woke up I would run into his room and jump up and down on his bed. One morning the door was closed, and the servant told me I wasn't allowed to see him because he was too sick.

"All of the other children wanted me to come and play, but couldn't stop crying. My father died soon afterwards. In the film, I had to play my mother grieving over my father's body. The script said I shouldn't cry but should act as if I was feeling deep emotion. I didn't need to act. I felt the pain of my father's death, and my mother's pain, all over again.

"I began to recite some prayers and suddenly found that I was thinking not only about my father's death but also about my parents, my past, and the purpose of my life. At that moment, I felt a deep inner peace- and a complete acceptance of my own death. And that was an experience I will never forget."