Published by: World Tibet Network News Tuesday, November 25, 1997

The Province, 24 November 1997

As Chinese president Jiang Zemin rolled into Vancouver yesterday, about 1,500 demonstrators shouted "Freedom for Tibet." "Putting economic rights over human rights is not right," said Palden Gyatso, a dissident monk who ate his own shoes to survive Chinese imprisonment.

Speaking through an interpreter, the 66-year-old Tibetan said he was jailed 33 years for protesting China's occupation of the country in 1949. Tibet, home to Mount Everest and often called the Roof of the World, is a country of 1.2-million square kms and two million people. It had been independent from China since 1911.

Gyatso was imprisoned in 1959 after taking part in a demonstration with other monks. For more than three decades he was fed a meagre diet of one spoon of porridge per day. "Because of the scarcity of food, the prisoners ate ants, rats and bugs," he said, a stubble of grey hair sprouting on his shaved head. Electric shocks were applied to his tongue in an unsuccessful attempt to change his mind. "Quite a few people died," he said. Gyatso lost all his teeth. He estimates there are up to 10,000 political prisoners. "I'm in Vancouver to tell Jiang that his policies in Tibet are not right," he said. "China must adhere to a universal declaration of human rights." Gyatso was freed on Aug. 25, 1992, after an international appeal. He has been living in India with the exiled Tibetan government and the Dalai Lama, the country's highest spiritual ruler.

The demonstration started at the Vancouver Art Gallery, snaked down Robson Street and wound up at the People's Summit at the Plaza of Nations.