New York, United States – More than 70 years after China invaded Tibet, Tenzin Tsultrim can still recall events as if they were yesterday.
A teenager at the time, Tsultrim was in training as a novice monk in eastern Tibet and remembers bombs from the planes of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) air force falling on the monastery. He was too young to fight but the older monks all took up arms.
Now 87, Tsultrim casts his mind back to those days long ago and clutches his prayer beads.
His eyes narrow.
“That was when I first got the idea that I needed to fight back once I could,” Tsultrim told Al Jazeera from New York where he has lived since 1997.
Eventually, Tsultrim and tens of thousands of other Khampas, from Tibet’s eastern Kham region, fled to Lhasa in central Tibet, which remained relatively calm.
Article from www.aljazeera.com rnrn