What’s going on in the Tibetan Blogosphere? Ask Dechen Pemba

A Tibetan netizen in her own right, Dechen Pemba, publisher of High Peaks Pure Earth (the remarkable blog that translates the writings of Tibetans living in Tibet and China) provides insight into the importance and the vulnerabilities of the Tibetan blogosphere in her following post:

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

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.

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Dechen Pemba is a UK born Tibetan, based in London.  She is the editor of the website High Peaks Pure Earth, which provides insightful commentary on Tibet related news and issues and translations from writings in Tibetan and Chinese posted blogs.

Take Action: Nepal Forcibly Returns 3 Tibetan Refugees to Tibet

For the first time since 2003, the Nepalese government has forcibly repatriated three Tibetan refugees to Tibet, violating international law and jeopardizing the safety of Tibetan escapees. The three Tibetans, all in their early twenties, were forcibly handed over to Chinese border police in early June. Two of them – a woman named Pempa from Shigatse and a monk from Korchak monastery located close to the Nepal border – have since been jailed in Tibet.

TAKE ACTION: Send a letter to Ms. Sujata Koirala, Nepal’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, calling on Nepal to uphold international law.

Call the Nepalese consulate or embassy nearest you to express your concern about the repatriation of Tibetans. Find contact information.

International pressure can help deter the Nepalese government from further violating the rights of Tibetan refugees. The UNHCR has expressed grave concern over the incident, and foreign embassies in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, generally support the “Gentleman’s Agreement”.

Alert your government representatives in Kathmandu to Nepal’s actions. Write to your country’s Ambassador to Nepal and urge him/her to raise this incident with the Nepalese authorities. Find contact information.

If you live in a city with a Nepalese consulate or embassy, please consider organizing an emergency protest to help draw international attention to this incident. For materials and support, please contact Tendolkar at tendolkar@studentsforafreetibet.org.

Nepal’s actions could set a devastating precedent for the more than one thousand Tibetans who attempt to flee Tibet each year by crossing the border into Nepal. The Nepalese government does not grant refugee status to Tibetans, but under the informal ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’, established between Nepal and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1989, thousands of Tibetan refugees have been provided safe transit through Nepal to India.

In recent years, the Chinese government has exerted heavy pressure on Nepal to stop Tibetans from fleeing across the border and recently announced it will grant the Nepalese government 1.5 million dollars (U.S) a year to ‘curb anti-China activities’. Although the situation for Tibetans living in Nepal was already tenuous, the recent repatriations are a drastic escalation in Nepal’s maltreatment of Tibetan refugees.

FOOTBALL, ROBBEN ISLAND & THE RELATIVISM OF POLITICAL CRUELTY

From JamyangNorbu.com Well, the World Cup’s over and the teams and visitors have all gone home, but the afterglow of achievement hasn’t entirely faded for South Africans. The people of this struggling “rainbow nation”, especially its new president Jacob Zuma, can be deservedly proud of having successfully hosted this tremendous international sporting event. Over forty years ago Zuma was a player himself, in fact the captain of the Rangers club, one of the teams that made up the Makana Football Association, organized by the prisoners of South Africa’s notorious Robben Island state prison.

An article in the New York Times mentioned that in Robben Island “…soccer brought relief from the exhausting life of breaking rocks in a quarry. It conferred dignity on prisoners subjected to beatings and humiliating body searches.” An inmate, Lizo Sitoto who was imprisoned on Robben island from 1963 until 1978, claimed that “football saved many of us. When you were outside playing, you felt free, as if you were at home.”

Nelson Mandela was kept in an isolation unit and not allowed to play football, but it appears that he somehow managed to keep himself physically fit. On Thursday February 11, 1990, when he was released from Robben island and the whole world celebrated his freedom, some observers noticed how spry and energetic he looked in spite of his 27 years behind bars.  His physical and mental fitness, was of course, in great part, the product of his own discipline, political focus and iron will.

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The Tongue of Our Mothers

Tibetan as a language has a great history and a rich literature. For centuries it evolved on the Tibetan plateau, its influence often flowing down into other Himalayan cultures such as those of Ladakh, Bhutan, Sikkim, Tawang and so on. Scholars and researchers maintain that Tibetan is the only language today in which one can access the full body of Buddhist literature, including all the root texts and the commentaries.

In the new millennium, when the Tibetan language is thriving in places like Bhutan, Ladakh and, curiously, on the internet, it is coming under systematic attack in Tibet. Watch this short video from Reuters reporting on how Tibetans in Tibet fear the loss of their mother tongue because of China’s education policies as well as cultural and economic imperialism in Tibet. I hope that the strength of our language and our spirit will withstand China’s effort to forcibly assimilate us.

A Digital Celebration of HHDL’s 75th by Tibetans in Tibet

Beginning on July 6th, the 75th birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tibetan web users in Tibet and China flooded popular Chinese language social networking websites with images of the Dalai Lama. Contained in status updates, profile pictures, and photo albums, images of  the Dalai lama and the banned Tibetan national flag filled popular networking sites 51.com and Qzone. This outpouring of expression and protest, largely by young Tibetans comes as China intensifies it’s crackdown on vocal Tibetans.

This “digital celebration” of His Holiness’s birthday from inside Tibet is joined by reports that thousands of Tibetans in Tawu, Kham South-Eastern Tibet, held a massive long life prayer where His Holiness’s portrait was honored followed by cultural performances and a traditional horse racing competition. As well as a video showing thousands of Tibetans in Golok Amnye Machen, Amdo North-Eastern Tibet, offering prayers and dedicating songs to their spiritual leader.

Bellow is a collection of images posted by Tibetan web users inside Tibet and China.

SFT Protests in Solidarity with the Uyghur People

June 8, 2010: The World Uyghur Congress marked the one year anniversary of the tragic July 2009 protest in Urumchi, East Turkestan today by organizing demonstrations and other actions all over the world. In New York City, Uyghurs and supporters demonstrated in front of China’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations. SFT’s executive director Tendor and USA grassroots director TenDolkar joined the protest in support of the Uyghur people in their struggle for basic human rights and gave rallying speeches striking similarities between the Tibetan and Uyghur people’s struggle for freedom. As the Chinese government continues to oppress the Tibetan and the Uyghur people and use excessive and extremely violent forces to crush all forms of dissent, SFT will stand and fight in solidarity with our Uyghur brothers and sisters for Rangzen, for freedom.

Video clips of Tendor’s speech to come up soon!

Tibetans in Tibet celebrate the Dalai Lama’s 75th birthday

As people worldwide celebrate the 75th birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tibetans in Tibet defy China’s restrictions to join the celebrations. Watch this incredible video of Tibetans in Amdo dedicating songs to the Tibetan leader: http://www.khabdha.org/

FUNERAL GAMES*

Few pleasures can beat the funeral of someone you loathe. It is not, I admit, a very Buddhist sentiment, but I think karma (the hardcore, not the new age version) will, this once, overlook my rancor, when I add that the someone in question is the late...