2010 September | Tibet Will Be Free

SFT’s Art for Tibet II: Art for the sake of freedom

Posted by tendor on Sep 30, 2010 in General | 0 comments

Last Saturday, several hundred people came by the Union Gallery on Broadway to check out SFT’s annual Art for Tibet exhibit. The exhibit, also a fundraiser for SFT’s campaign work, featured the works of more than a hundred artists from around the world, including several Tibetan contemporary artists. It coincided with an art exhibit featuring Tibetan artists that is taking place in Beijing, which I thought was very auspicious. The online auction is still continuing at www.artfortibet.org, and you can bid now till Monday.

Tendor addresses the audience at Art for Tibet's Gallery Event

This event, while different in appearance from SFT’s trademark protests in Beijing and around the world, serves the same purpose of empowering the Tibet movement while educating new audiences about the Tibet issue. It is, more importantly, an accurate reflection of the growing cultural movement in Tibet through which Tibetans are asserting their identity and expressing their desire for freedom through the use of music, poetry, literature and other forms of art.

This form of activism through art and culture has proved quite effective; the subtlety and symbolism behind artistic expression is harder for the Chinese authorities to identify as dissent and crackdown on.

We were honored to have some of the biggest names in Tibetan contemporary art including Pema Rinzin, Gonkar Gyatso, Tenzing Rigdol, Tsherin Sherpa display their works alongside internationally recognized artists Shepard Fairey, Richard Gere and Ben Baker. To our great joy we also received three artworks from Tibet!

One of the highlights of the event was a series of live performances by a New York-based artist and two Tibetan contemporary artists. Here is a short video of Chungpo Tsering’s performance piece, “Black Hat Dance,” a Tibetan ritual dance that invokes images of death meant to prepare audiences for the ultimate transition. Click here to watch the video.

We are grateful for the participation by so many artists who chose to contribute to this event. As their freedom allowed them to produce these artworks, the same artworks in return will allow Tibetans to pursue our freedom.

View photos from Saturday’s gallery event:

: Pema Rinzin’s original painting, “The Light of my Homeland”

"Mining Tycoon Says: Tibetans Hope to Get Rich from Mining" By Woeser

Posted by High Peaks Pure Earth on Sep 29, 2010 in General, Global Contributors, SFT Global | 0 comments

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a blogpost by Woeser that was originally written for broadcast on Radio Free Asia on September 9, 2010 in Beijing and posted on her blog on September 28, 2010.

This is another blogpost by Woeser that deals with mining in Tibet. For previous articles by Woeser on this topic see:

Tibet's Water Pollution and China's "Global Warming" (December 2009)
Songtsen Gampo’s Hometown Is About To Be Completely Excavated (June 2010)
Where will the next Drugchu be? (August 2010)
"Avatar" in Tibet (September 2010)

In the blogpost, Woeser quotes an article by Tibetan writer Jamyang Norbu, to read his article "High Sanctuary" in full, click on this link.

Finally, a small note about the term 'Hongding Businessman' that Woeser uses at the end of the blogpost, 'hong' literally means red and 'ding' means the tip, it is a reference to a hat with a red tip, referring to a traditional Chinese government official.

The photos below were taken from the mining tycoon Bian Hongdeng's microblog:

"Mining Tycoon Says: Tibetans Hope to Get Rich from Mining"

By Woeser

(more...)

Students for a Free Tibet Delivers Your Messages to China Premier Wen Jiabao!

Posted by kate on Sep 24, 2010 in Activism & Tibet, Featured, General, Multimedia, Protests, Take Action | 0 comments

Thank you to the more than 300 people who tweeted, emailed, texted and posted messages to Wen Jiabao during his stay here in New York. We received messages from people in dozens of countries around the world, including two messages from Tibetan students in Tibet.

On Wednesday evening, SFT activists projected your messages to Wen Jiabao on and around his hotel. We also had a live twitter feed for people to post messages directly to the Premier. View photos of the action.

On Thursday morning, we attempted to deliver the messages to Wen Jiabao’s hotel. After the Chinese delegation refused to accept our messages, they were successfully delivered to the front desk in Wen Jiabao’s name.

Yesterday, Premier Wen addressed the United Nations General Assembly; his speech was entitled Getting to Know the Real China. Tibetans and their supporters were on hand to expose his lies and to assert the Tibetan people’s real desire for freedom and independence.

For the past three days we’ve followed Wen Jiabao everywhere – inspired by the courage of Tibetans inside Tibet who continue to risk everything to speak out and to resist Chinese rule. Together we can ensure Wen Jiabao and China’s leaders are shamed and embarrassed everywhere they go until Tibet is free.

We will be sending all the messages we’ve received for Wen Jiabao, directly to the Chinese government’s compound in Beijing (Ch: Zhongnankai). If you haven’t yet, please add your message (no longer than 100 characters) to Wen Jiabao here:

Tweet a message to Wen Jiabao @wjbny
Email a short message to protestwen@gmail.com or text to +1-707-836-3677.
Become a fan of Students for a Free Tibet on Facebook and post your message to the Wall.

Thank you for all that you do for Tibet,

Tendor, Kate, Tendolkar, Mary-Kate, Stefanie, and all of us here at SFT HQ

Support SFT’s work by making a donation today.

The Virtual Sweet Tea House: An Overview of the Tibetan Cyberspace

Posted by High Peaks Pure Earth on Sep 24, 2010 in General, Global Contributors, SFT Global | 0 comments

Screenshot from a Tibetan blog

High Peaks Pure Earth is posting an original article originally written on the occasion of BlogDay, August 31, 2010. The article is a general overview of the Tibetan blogosphere and was first posted on this site I Heart Tibet. It was also later re-posted on The Comment Factory. Apologies for the late posting on High Peaks Pure Earth!

The Virtual Sweet Tea House: An Overview of the Tibetan Cyberspace

By High Peaks Pure Earth

As a place to meet, share and exchange, the Tibetan blogosphere has created opportunities for Tibetan netizens that would be unimaginable in the offline world. Keeping in mind the state of internet censorship in the People’s Republic of China today, these new spaces can be seen as new outlets but also as new areas involving personal risk. Tibetan cyberspace has opened up a new opportunity for expression, which has also brought new risks to this community.

There are several blog-hosting sites, both Tibetan and Chinese, that are favoured by Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) today. One of the of the most popular Chinese language sites is called Tibetan Culture Net or simply TibetCul. TibetCul was started by two brothers, Wangchuk Tseten and Tsewang Norbu, and their head office is in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu Province. According to Alexa, the web Information Company, TibetCul receives over 400,000 hits every month. TibetCul is primarily a news and blog-hosting site but there are many different sections on the site related to Tibetan music, literature, films and travel. There is a BBS forum (bulletin board) and there is even a section dedicated to “overseas Tibetans”.

For all Tibet related news, blogs and cultural activities, TibetCul is an invaluable resource and source of information. Many posts translated into English by High Peaks Pure Earth come from TibetCul, such as the translation of the popular Tibetan hip-hop song “New Generation” by Green Dragon that was first featured on the group’s TibetCul blog in February 2010 in which a gang of Amdo rappers boldly proclaimed:

“The new generation has a resource called youth

The new generation has a pride called confidence

The new generation has an appearance called playfulness

The new generation has a temptation called freedom”

In a similar surge of pride in Tibetan identity that featured on Tibetan blogs post-2008, TibetCul blogs featured many poems and prose articles with the title “I Am Tibetan” and new posts are being written even today.

Heated discussions and debate take place on TibetCul every day about all matters of concern to Tibetans. One major example would be the online vilification of well-known Tibetan singer Lobsang Dondrup following photos posted on blogs of him and his wife both wearing fur at their wedding ceremony in early 2009. The photos were quickly re-posted across many blogs, incurring the wrath of angry Tibetan netizens and comments criticising the couple flooded the internet forums both in Tibetan and Chinese. This must all be seen in context, in 2006, after the Dalai Lama’s injunction against the wearing of animal fur, a wave of fur burning protests took place in Amdo and Kham. Hence the netizens anger and loathing for the couple. Shortly after, Lobsang Dondrup posted an apology online through his friend’s TibetCul blog.

The above observations on TibetCul demonstrate the nature of cyberspace in the ability to bring people together in discussion and debate and also the ability for the online content to transcend national borders, “New Generation” has gone on to become a popular song amongst Tibetans all over the world and the “I Am Tibetan” poetry and spirit has sparked Tibetan exile groups to hold events to amplify voices from Tibet.

In a paper from 2004, Tibetan scholar Tashi Rabgey referred to the Lhasa tradition of the Sweet Tea House: “Throughout the 1980s, sweet tea houses had served as important gathering places for Tibetans to exchange news, air opinions and discuss ideas.” However, “with the tightening of political controls in the early 1990s [...] this unusual space of lively, open debate was brought to an end through constant surveillance.” The new virtual Sweet Tea House contains Tibetans who are literate in many languages but mainly in Tibetan, Chinese and English and Tibetans from Central Tibet, Kham, Amdo, India, USA and beyond, all in contact and dialogue.

Whilst the potential for contact and dialogue in the Tibetan cyberspace is great, control of the internet and the politicisation of the blog content poses difficulties and risks. Monitoring Tibetan blogs reveals that throughout the year, at times deemed “sensitive” by the Chinese government, Tibetan blog-hosting sites will suddenly with no explanation or prior warning either be taken offline or be offline “for maintenance”. This happens typically for Tibetan blogs around the time of March 10, the anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. See this link for an example of TibetCul suddenly disappearing offline and this link for Tibetan-language blogs being taken offline.

Similarly, individual bloggers are in danger of being targeted by the state for blog content deemed to be dubious. The most famous example is the Tibetan poet, writer and blogger, Woeser, who was writing two blogs, one on TibetCul and another on a Chinese blog hosting site but both of which were suddenly shut down on 28 July 2006. Woeser then had no choice but to start a new blog on a server hosted outside the PRC but has since faced a new set of problems such as server cyber-attacks by Chinese nationalists, both to her blogs and her Skype accounts.

Tibetan language blog-hosting sites have been even more vulnerable than TibetCul and two previously very popular sites have been inaccessible since 2009, http://tibettl.com/ and http://www.tibetabc.cn/ The latter was particularly a great loss as prominent singer and blogger Jamyang Kyi’s blog had previously been hosted by Tibetabc but she seems to have stopped blogging altogether since the site was closed down.

Two recent examples of individuals using blogs and the internet for purposes of social justice have been Dolkar Tso and Shogdung. Dolkar Tso, the wife of environmentalist Karma Samdrup, was blogging almost daily in June and July 2010, documenting the events of her husband’s trial and expressing her personal feelings about the injustice of his sentencing to 15 years in prison. Amazingly, Dolkar Tso persistently kept blogging on Chinese blog-hosting site Sohu and, at the last count, is on her fifth blog as the others kept being shut down rapidly.

Tagyal, a writer and intellectual who used the pen name Shogdung meaning “Morning Conch”, openly spoke out in April 2010 following the devastating earthquake that hit Yushu. He, along with several other intellectuals, published an open letter on Tibetan language blog-hosting site http://www.sangdhor.com in which they expressed condolences and at the same time were critical of the Chinese government in their handling of the earthquake relief efforts. Following this open letter, Shogdung was arrested and is still facing trial. Following Shogdung’s arrest, the site Sangdhor was taken offline for several months and has only recently come back online.

The last two examples of Dolkar Tso and Shogdung illustrate the importance of Tibetan blogs as sources of information and as ways to highlight injustice but evidently this comes at a great price for the individuals involved. The virtual Sweet Tea House is ultimately as vulnerable as the Lhasa tea houses of the 1990s were and is likely to remain so as long as Tibetan blogs remain behind the Great Firewall.

SFT Projects Your Messages to Wen Jiabao in NYC

Posted by Nick G on Sep 23, 2010 in Direct Action, Technology, Video, Photos & Audio | 4 comments

On Wednesday evening (Sept 23), SFT activists projected live twitter messages on and around Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s hotel in NYC. Messages from dozens of countries, including Tibet and China were sent via twitter to @wjbny and emailed to protestwen@gmail.com. Read more about SFT’s Direct Line to Wen Jiabao.