Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan monk who endured 33 years of imprisonment and abuse at the hands of the Chinese government, will speak at Colby College on Sunday, April 2, at 7 p.m. in the Page Commons Room, Cotter Union. Gyatso will recount the atrocities he suffered at the hands of Chinese officials. The event is open to the public and free of charge.

Born and raised in a small Tibetan village, Gyatso was 18 years old when he was ordained a Buddhist monk at Drepung, one of Tibet’s most esteemed monasteries. He was jailed in 1959, at the height of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, when the government sought to crush Tibetan culture and enforce "thought reform" on the Tibetan people. For the next three decades Gyatso was tortured, interrogated and persecuted for his beliefs. Throughout imprisonment he resisted the Chinese authorities and was an inspiration to his fellow inmates.

Gyatso was released from Drapchi prison in Lhasa in 1992, partly due to international pressure from groups like Amnesty International. Prior to his flight out of Tibet into India, and at great personal risk, Gyatso procured instruments of torture, like the ones used on him, to show the outside world. Gyatso now has devoted his life to exposing the atrocities committed by the Chinese government against the Tibetan people and the plight of political prisoners in Tibet. He has testified before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva and the U.S. Congress about the abuses he suffered. In 1996 he marched 300 miles from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. to the United Nations in New York City to commemorate Tibet’s National Uprising Day. Gyatso received the John Humphrey Human Rights Award in 1998 and is the author of the acclaimed book The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk (1997).

Gyatso’s nationwide U.S. speaking tour is organized by Global Exchange, a grassroots, non-profit human rights organization based in San Francisco. The Colby lecture is sponsored by Amnesty International, the Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights, the Cultural Affairs Committee, and the departments of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies.