Labsang Jinpa

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Tibetan monk chronicling human rights abuses.

At age thirteen, Lobsang began to speak out against the exclusion of Tibetan language and culture in the school curriculum. His protests calling for change met with threats from authorities. In 1982, he joined the Sera Monastery and became a monk. There, he began to chronicle human rights abuses in Tibet. Risking a long prison term or even execution, Lobsang passed his information on to foreigners he came into contact with, hoping they would smuggle it to the outside world. From 1983 to 1986, Lobsang, along with four other monks, represented the Sera Monastery in the Regional People’s Congress of the “Tibet Autonomous Region.” Throughout this period, they protested the absence of human rights in general and religious freedom in particular. Then in 1987, Lobsang led a demonstration in support of the Dalai Lama to counter the Chinese authorities’ assertion that the Tibetan people no longer supported their religious leader. Lobsang and his fellow monks were beaten, briefly detained, and released. Later, however, the Chinese police raided the monastery, brutally beat the monks, and dragged six of them away to prison. Lobsang managed to avoid capture. When the Chinese authorities offered a substantial reward for his capture or his dead body, he fled and began a nine-month trek across the treacherous Himalaya Mountains. Aided by his fellow Tibetans, he managed to make it out of the country alive. When Chinese forces couldn’t find him, they killed his father and imprisoned his mother. Lobsang made it to India, where he continued to work for human rights in Tibet from a monastery in Bangalore.

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