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Two Tibetan nuns arrived Saturday at the home in exile of the Dalai Lama after fleeing their homeland in the face of severe Chinese restrictions and after spending years as political prisoners.
Rigzin Choekyi and Lhundrub Zangmo, who formed part of a group known as the "Drapchi singing nuns", were weary after their mountainous journey through Nepal to India, witnesses said.
"The two nuns arrived this morning and as they are tired and one of them is sick they will be resting today," said Dorji, director of the Tibetan Reception Center. Like many Tibetans he uses only one name.
The women were among 14 nuns who in 1993 secretly recorded songs on a tape about the Dalai Lama, Tibets exiled spiritual leader, while serving sentences in Tibet's notorious Drapchi prison.
The tape was smuggled out of prison to the West. As a result the nuns' sentences were extended.
Rigzin Choekyi eventually served 12 years in prison, and Lhundrub Zangmo, nine years, as both had five years added to their original terms over the tape recordings, according to the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT).
Both were released from prison in recent years.
In Nepal earlier this week the nuns told the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) that they had recorded the songs as "a way of demonstrating to family and friends outside the prison that our spirits had not been broken."
Tibetan officials have said the two nuns will be granted an audience with the Dalai Lama once he returns to Dharamsala on June 12.
Former Tibet political prisoners are kept under strict surveillance by the Chinese even after their release, and monks and nuns are not allowed to rejoin their monasteries, according to the ICT.
Tibet has been ruled by China since its troops took control of the region in 1950. The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 as the Tibetan uprising failed and established his government-in-exile in Dharamsala.
The north Indian hill station of Dharamsala, where there is a huge Tibetan population living in exile, provides immediate care to arriving refugees.
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AFP 031129 GMT 06 06
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