In the stillness of Tibet’s highlands, his name once carried warmth. Tulku Hungkar Dorje Rinpoche was known not only for his teachings but for his quiet acts of compassion. He built schools for nomad children, opened clinics for the poor, and turned his monastery in Gade County into a refuge of both faith and service.
But that same independence made him a target. In August 2024, Chinese authorities detained him after he refused to lead ceremonies glorifying the state. Released weeks later, he fled across the border into Vietnam, seeking a peace that eluded him even there.
On March 25, 2025, police in Ho Chi Minh City, reportedly alongside Chinese officials, detained him. For four days, no one knew where he was. Then came the official claim – he had died of a heart attack. There was no prior illness, no independent autopsy, no explanation. His body was cremated under official supervision, without his family’s consent. His monastery in Tibet was ordered into silence. Monks who spoke his name online were summoned by the police.
The United Nations has since demanded clarity. Four of its human rights experts have questioned both Hanoi and Beijing -asking who authorized his arrest, what law allowed it, and how a healthy man could die in custody. They have also asked why foreign officials operated on Vietnamese soil and why the cremation was carried out without transparency. Both governments were given sixty days to respond. None have provided an answer.
His students still pray, their chants carrying across the grasslands and into the exile settlements of India and Nepal. Many whisper that their teacher’s passing was not an accident but an erasure — one more chapter in a long history of silencing Tibetan voices.
Hungkar Dorje’s mother died weeks later, broken by grief. His disciples continue his work in secret, teaching compassion in a world that rewards cruelty. For them, his death is not the end of a life but a mirror held up to power — showing what happens when truth itself becomes dangerous.
Every lama teaches impermanence, but this one left behind a harder lesson that justice, too, can vanish if the world refuses to look.
And yet, even in the silence left by his passing, the echo of his voice remains. Somewhere in the mountains of Amdo, a butter lamp still burns for him, its small flame insisting that the truth, however long suppressed, will find its way back into the light.
