Phuntsok wangyal

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Phuntsok Wangyal Goranangpa, also known as Bapa Phuntsok Wangyal or Phünwang is a Tibetan born in 1922 in Batang, in the province of Kham, Eastern Tibet. He is best known for having founded the Tibetan Communist Party and was a major figure in modern Sino-Tibetan relations. He was arrested by the Chinese authorities in 1960 and subsequently spent 18 years in the infamous Chinese high security prison Qincheng in solitary confinement.

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[edit] Biography

Phünwang was born in 1922 in Batang, in the province of Kham in Tibet. Phünwang began his political activism at school, where he secretly founded the Tibetan Communist Party. Until 1949, he organized a guerilla movement against the Chinese Guomindang which expanded military influence in Kham.

The strategy of the Tibetan Communist Party under his leadership during the 1940s was twofold: influence and gain support for his cause amongst progressive Tibetan students, intellectuals and members of the powerful aristocracy in Central Tibet in order to establish a program of modernization and democratic reform, while at the same time sustain a guerilla war against the rule of Liu Wenhui, an important warlord who affiliated with the Guomindang.

Phünwang's political goal was to see an independent and united Tibet, and to achieve a fundamental transformation of Tibet's feudal social structures. He was expulsed by the Tibetan government in 1949, and after joining the Chinese Communist Party's fight against the Guomindang he fused his Tibetan party with the Chinese Communist Party, at the behest of the Chinese military leaders, which meant that he had to abandon his goals of an independent socialist Tibet.[1] He played an important administrative role in the organization of the party in Lhasa and was the official translator of the young 14th Dalai Lama during his famous meetings with Mao Zedong in Beijing in the years 1954-55.

In the 1950s, Phünwang was the highest-ranking Tibetan in the Chinese Communist Party, and although he spoke fluent Chinese, was habituated to Chinese culture and custums and was completely devoted to the cause of socialism and to the Communist Party, his intensive engagement for the wellbeing of the Tibetans made him suspicious to his powerful party comrades. Eventually, in 1958, he was placed under house arrest and two years later disappeared from the public eye. He was imprisoned in solitary confinement in the Chinese equivalent of the Bastille in Beijing for 18 years.

An as-told-to biography has been published in English, where he particularly emphasizes the need to better understand the interests of the Tibetan people in the context of peace and unity in the People's Republic of China[2]

Phuntsok Wangyal Goranangpa has been officially rehabilitated a few years after his release in 1978 but remained in Beijing without any outside contact.[3], [4]

Recently, he declared in an open letter to Hu Jintao that he should accommodate for the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet, suggesting that this gesture would be "...good for stabilizing Tibet. In a third letter dated 1st of August 2006, he wrote : «If the inherited problem of Tibet continues to be post-poned, it is perfect.y possible that this could result in the creation of an Eastern Vatican of Tibetan Buddhism next to the Tibetan Government in Exile. Then, the Tibet problem, both at national as well as at international level, will become more comlicated and painful.[5]

[edit] Published Works

Liquid Water Does Exist on the Moon, Beijing, China, Foreign Languages Press, 2002, ISBN 7119013491

Witness to Tibet's History, Baba Phuntsok Wangyal, New Delhi, Paljor Publication, 2007, ISBN 818623058-0

[edit] See also

[edit] Internal links

List of Tibetan political prisoners

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ The prisoner by Tsering Shakya
  2. ^ Biography of a Tibetan Revolutionary Highlights Complexity of Modern Tibetan Politics
  3. ^ Lectures critiques par Fabienne Jagou
  4. ^ Le dernier caravanier par Claude Arpi
  5. ^ Baba Phuntsok: Witness to Tibet's History

Melvyn Goldstein Dawei Sherap, William Siebenschuh. A Tibetan Revolutionary. The political life of Bapa Phüntso Wangye. U. of California Press, pp. 371, 2004

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