Palden Gyatso was born in Panam, Tibet in 1933. At the age of 10, he became a monk at Gadong Monastery and completed his training at Drepung Monastery. In 1950, China took control of Tibet because they consider it a culturally distinct part of China. Gyatso protested Chinese control of his homeland and was imprisoned almost continuously from 1959 until his release and exile in 1992. While in prison, he endured starvation, hard labor, and torture.
In 1995, he spoke before the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva and a human rights subcommittee of the House of Representatives in Washington. In 1997, he published a memoir written with Tsering Shakya. The memoir inspired a documentary film about Gyatso entitled Fire Under the Snow. He died from liver cancer on November 30, 2018 at the age of 85.
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