"During the Tibetan uprising against the Chinese army on March 10, 1959 in Lhasa, many Tibetan women took up arms. Some were killed and others arrested and thrown in prison, notably in the sinister Drapchi jail. There, they were tortured and the Chinese burst their eardrums, firing revolver bullets close to their ears. When they were executed, witnesses found that they were missing an ear and that most of their hair had been torn out. One of them was not finished off by the salvo – and before receiving the final blow, she had time to shout: “Freedom for Tibet! » Anne Riquier, author of Paroles de Tibétaines (Éditions Plon), who met Tibetan women who survived torture, quotes one of them: “They had tied our knees to our chest, tied our hands behind the back and they put rubbers in our mouths to keep them open. They first urinated in our mouths, then they stuck their penises in there. If we closed our eyes, they hit us with belts so that we kept them wide open,” says Dolma, who was arrested for distributing leaflets supporting her country’s independence."