THE VANGUARD: Bapa Phüntso Wangye passes away, the Tibetan communist who passed 18 years in jail

Confidant of Mao and the Dalai Lama, He was a rare bridge man in the Tibetan conflict

In prison, He spent nine years without saying a single word.; he limited himself to singing Tibetan songs

International | 02/04/2014

Rafael Poch
Berlin Correspondent

PHOTO: Phüntso Wangye's father, one of the founders of the Communist Party of Tibet Archive

The conflict of Tibet It is usually presented as a no-nuance struggle between angelic Tibetan traditionalists supported by the West and evil Chinese communists.. It is ignored that there were Tibetans who fought not only for their country, but also for the radical transformation of its society, anchored both in a valuable traditional culture and in anachronisms incompatible with any conception of justice and law. Phüntso Wangye's father (boy, Proviction of Sichuan, 1922), died on Sunday in Beijing at 92 year old, was one of them.

     I had the opportunity to meet him 14 November 2007 in his house in the Beijing neighborhood of Muxidi, where many former ministers and retired senior officials live. I retain the date because of the dedication he made to me of his biography., “A Tibetan revolutionary”, a book published in California in 2004 that I keep with his calligraphy. With it he gently returned my own present to me, a copy of the Chinese edition of my book on Russia, which included the photocopy of the chapter on the Chechen revolt that the Chinese censorship translated but subtly omitted from the general public edition. Like all national issues, That chapter particularly interested him..

    We talked for a good time, with the help of his lovely granddaughter, but I couldn't get Bapa Phüntso to grant me a formal and publishable interview. His thoughts were known and so was his career.. He asked me about the Basque and Catalan issues.

  In the forties of the twentieth century, Bapa Phüntso had been one of the founders of the first communist party in the Himalayan kingdom, independent of the Chinese Communist Party. At that time he was the translator of The International to the Tibetan and hid books of Lenin, burying them in his father's garden.

 His position and tenacity earned him the trust of both Mao and the Dalai Lama.. “As long as Mao trusts him, There is hope for Tibet”, the Dalai Lama had said, then a young man, whom Bapa accompanied to Beijing, serving as translator. After 1949 He was Mao's interpreter and his advisor on Tibetan affairs. He later led the Tibetan government for nine years under the aegis of Beijing.. Bapa Phüntso intended, to understand each other, a synthesis between Mao and the Dalai Lama, between modernization and social reform on the one hand, and culture and national identity on the other.

 That was too subtle for those times of the Cultural Revolution., intense cold war and Tibetan guerrilla armed and financed by the CIA, so he ended up taking him to Qincheng prison, in Beijing, for eighteen years accused of “nationalism”. It was after the campaign against the rightists of 1958, a year before the Dalai Lama fled to India.

   “During the first nine years of prison, I did not get them to formulate the accusation they had against me, when they finally did it, I smiled and told them; “They can kill me if they want.”, But I'm not going to tell you anything more.". In the following nine years of solitary imprisonment he limited himself to singing traditional Tibetan songs., without saying a single word. “After my release, “It took me two years to get my voice back.”, told me.

   Rehabilitated in 1978, The Tibetan communist leader was vice director of the Nationalities Committee of the Chinese National People's Congress. Bapa Phüntso never stopped criticizing the flow of Chinese settlers to Tibet. “If that continues like this, In a few years the only Tibetan thing that will remain in Lhasa will be the Potala”. I wasn't very wrong. Until the end of your days, advocated a Beijing pact with the Dalai Lama, who he said was “the key to the Tibet question”. In two letters addressed to the top Chinese leaders he openly called for the return of the Dalai Lama. For all that, His death means the disappearance of a bridge.

  “He was an honest and sincere man who showed that you can be a genuine communist and at the same time be proud of the Tibetan identity”, the Dalai Lama said in a note released on the occasion of the death of Bapa Phüntso Wangye.