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Female political prisoners at Drapchi: the buildup of Unit 3directors became exasperated, the entire group was forced to run for an extended period in loosened soil, “where flowers aregrown”. Exhausted and expecting more over-exertion, the women reported to the following day’s session wearing lighterclothing. Instead, water was sprinkled on a concrete slab and they were forced to stand barefoot and motionless on the frigidsurface.In January, about five months after they had arrived at Drapchi, they were told that a “competition” would be staged later thatmonth between Drapchi prisoners and those at Lhasa Prison, formerly known to Tibetans as Utritru (Ch: wuzhidui), akilometre east of Drapchi. Inmates would be expected to know and perform the drills precisely. Part of the performancewould be chanting a four-syllable Chinese slogan in cadence with the exercises. Initially they chanted the words as demanded,but were soon alerted that the slogan affirmed that a prisoner had recognized her criminality, was working to reform herbehaviour, and had resolved to rejoin society as a “new person”. Outraged, the women, as a group, ceased shouting the sloganas suddenly as they had begun.The PAP supervisors were furious, accusing the women of having lied when they claimed not to know Chinese. They forcedthe inmates to start running and threatened that they would not be permitted to stop until they resumed the chant. Insistingthere was no crime to reform, the women refused to relent. One of the women told TIN:“They punished us in many ways for not shouting their slogans. We were made to stand on cement floors with water,they placed bricks on our feet, they made us run. They questioned and beat each of us individually. Although theydid all this, no one shouted their slogans.” 45After that, female political prisoners had their year split between work in Drapchi’s wool sheds, part of the prison’s Tibetancarpet enterprise, and performing military-style drills. Summer is the season for wool work; winter is reserved for martialexercise. Claims continue to be made by released prisoners that the regimen was one of the most debilitating features ofprison life. Choekyi Wangmo, a Shar Bumpa nun released in December 1999 after completing a sentence extended forparticipating in the May 1998 protests, is reported to be in precarious health partly because of the harm she suffered as as aresult of the “exercises”. Choeying Kunsang offers her own assessment:“Most of the beatings and punishments of the prisoners are related to the exercises. The exercises are the worst rule in theprison. You enter the prison healthy and you leave the prison with all sorts of ailments.” 4619