NPR’s Beijing Corespondent Anthony Kuhn did an amazing interview with Tibetan writer and poet Woeser on China’s clampdown on ringtone songs deemed “revolutionary” in recent weeks. The interview was broadcast on NPR’s popular All Thing Considered.
Woeser discusses the popularity of patriotic songs:
“Ama Jetsun Pema,” a very popular Tibetan song, is one example.
You have endured all sorts of hardship for the sake of the children of the Land of Snows.
How can we forget you, whose kindness to us is as deep as the deepest sea.
All the children of the Land of Snows pay tribute to you, Ama Jetsun Pema.
“As soon as this song came out, everyone was very excited,” says Woeser. “We all ran down to the markets to listen to it and buy it, as if it would disappear if we didn’t. When it was eventually labeled as reactionary, everyone said, ‘Oh, it’s finally been exposed.’”"Ama Jetsun Pema,” a very popular Tibetan song, is one example.
You have endured all sorts of hardship for the sake of the children of the Land of Snows.
How can we forget you, whose kindness to us is as deep as the deepest sea.
All the children of the Land of Snows pay tribute to you, Ama Jetsun Pema.
“As soon as this song came out, everyone was very excited,” says Woeser. “We all ran down to the markets to listen to it and buy it, as if it would disappear if we didn’t. When it was eventually labeled as reactionary, everyone said, ‘Oh, it’s finally been exposed.”
Today, February 25, 2009, is the date on which Tibetan New Year — Losar — begins. Many Tibetan exiles around the world are observing Losar in a different manner this year. Some are forgoing traditional observances to instead protest human rights abuses by the Chinese government inside Tibet. There are reports that Chinese authorites are effectively making Losar celebrations inside Tibet compulsory, and reactions have led to violent clashes.Some links to coverage: a post about civil disobedience today from the exiled Tibetan poet Woeser. In the LA Times, China expects Tibet to celebrate, or else — snip:
On Feb. 14, a 39-year-old Tibetan monk set off a furor when he walked through a public market in the Tibetan plateau’s Lithang county carrying a photograph of the Dalai Lama and chanting, “No Losar.” Hundreds of people reportedly joined the protests, which continued into the next two days, according to the Dharamsala-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy. The group said that Chinese police detained 21 people, some of whom were badly beaten, and that the county has been locked down for the holiday.Reports say that as many as 20,000 additional soldiers and paramilitary troops have been deployed in Tibetan areas and that in Qinghai province, village leaders were threatened with arrest if they urged people not to celebrate the holiday.
Even among Tibetans, there is a vigorous debate about the campaign to boycott Losar. The holiday, which dates back to pre-Buddhist times, is the most beloved in the Tibetan calendar and involves elaborate rituals and meals. Families traditionally make a soup with special dumplings in which they hide various items — chile pepper, wool, charcoal — and family members read their fortune by which dumpling they pick.
Today’s AP article covering Losar included a quote from SFT’s Lhadon Tethong:
“The Chinese government is flooding Tibet with troops and attempting to force Tibetans to celebrate the New Year against their will but, in spite of incredible risks to themselves, Tibetans remain defiant,” Lhadon Tethong, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, said in an e-mail
Below are quotes translated into English made by an anonymous caller in Lhasa during a call-in show with Radio Free Asia on Friday, February 20th.
“Situation gets more critical and serious everyday. In Barkor, area packed with soldiers as Losar and March approach. Walking about town is a very fear-inducing experience.’
“I saw with my own eyes on Feb 10th, 7pm, I saw 5 students arrested by soldiers for no particular reason. People being arrested randomly. The students were 20 somethings, male. An army vehicle stopped by, and threw them straight into the vehicle. Everyone who saw it said that was outright injustice. I think it was on the same day when a state media tour was being conducted for journos from 10 countries.
“Usually, the government media will blast propaganda about how normal and peaceful Lhasa is. But right now, the officers and the authorities are showing very strong contempt for Tibetans. They’re not bothering to hide it.”
“Since Feb 1, no one from neighboring areas are allowed into Lhasa. People from places such as Nyemo and Meldrogongkar in particular are banned from entering Lhasa.”
“Ramoche temple area is packed with soldiers. Usually Jokhang is packed with pilgrims prostrating in front, now there are barely anyone doing prostrations at Jokhang.”
“Compared to last year this time, there are very few people to be seen in Lhasa. No one in and around are celebrating Losar. And besides, how can one celebrate Losar amidst such army and police presence even if they wanted to?”
“Under such tight repression, Tibetans are feeling that the Chinese government treats them with the utmost disrespect and contempt. We feel like we’re not even considered human. China is a big country, but its human rights record is one of the worst in the world, even as everywhere else human rights is improving.”
“Some young Tibetans were wearing black masks (mouth covers) as a symbolic display to show that they’ve no freedom of speech. But then anyone seen wearing a black mask is also being arrested.”
“The Chinese govt always talks about harmony and improving relations between Tibs and Chinese, but under such hostile circumstances and severe repression, how can we have harmonious relations with the Chinese?”
“Han and Hui Chinese are generally not supportive of Tibetans. Among them, many of them returned to China recently. But in their place, more new ones have come in.”
“Local authorities gave each welfare Tibetan family 835 yuan gift certificate to be redeemed at a Chinese supermarket. But ironically, this supermarket doesn’t sell any item that are useful to Tibetans like tsampa and butter.”
“Not just Tibetans but also Uyghurs are being repressed heavily in Tibet. These Uyghurs, when interacting or doing business with Tibetans, are asking us not to speak Chinese to them, that they would rather speak Tibetan with us. This kind of solidarity from Uyghurs has been a good source of lesson and inspiration for the Tibetans.”
“One of the Tibetan markets in Lhasa known as Tomsikhang has been bought by a Chinese businessman, who’s turning the market into a new complex. All new shops applying for a space in the new complex has to produce 70,000-80,000 yuan as capital, which is nearly impossible for many of the Tibetan shopkeepers. This will mean that many of the modest shopkeepers who’ve been selling incense, sweets, convenience supplies in Tomsikhang for generations will soon lose their shops in their old area.”
Barbara Demick of the LA Times writes about Beijing’s paranoid response to the ‘No Losar’ movement in Tibet – the widespread civil disobedience campaign of Tibetans refusing to celebrate the Tibetan New Year beginning February 25th:
Instead of planning festivities to mark their beloved New Year’s, Tibetans want to remember those who died in last year’s protests against Chinese rule. But Beijing has other ideas.
February 23, 2009
Reporting from Beijing — The Chinese government has a New Year’s greeting for Tibetans: Celebrate, or else.
The Tibetan New Year, or Losar, is normally the most festive holiday of the year, when Tibetans burn incense, make special dumplings and set off fireworks. But this year, Tibetans have declared a moratorium on celebrating their own holiday, saying they will instead observe a mourning period for people killed last year during protests against Chinese rule.
The 15-day holiday begins Wednesday, and as it approaches, tensions are rising. In the last few weeks, the Chinese government has closed large swaths of western China to foreign visitors — not just Tibet itself, but parts of provinces with large Tibetan populations.
Nearly a year after the violent demonstrations reportedly left more than 120 dead, Tibetans are trying a novel technique for nonviolent protest. “Say No to Losar,” as the campaign is called, was launched by Tibetan groups in Dharamsala, India, the Dalai Lama’s home in exile.
“Instead of the usual celebrations marked by singing, dancing and other festivities, silence will be observed and butter lamps will be lit in the temples and homes to pray for the deceased,” they announced in a statement last month.
The tactic appears to be driving Chinese authorities crazy. They’re countering with their own campaign of forced merriment, organizing concerts, pageants, fireworks, horse races, archery competitions. They’ve declared a one-week public holiday beginning today in Tibet and are offering free admission to museums and parks.
The Communist Party in Tibet also gave vouchers worth $120 each to 37,000 low-income families to shop for the holidays.
To further tempt the 2.8 million Tibetans, state television will broadcast a four-hour gala with 800 performers Tuesday night.
“They want to show that the Tibetan people are happy, that they have returned to normal life. But by intervening, they’re making them unhappy,” said Tsering Shayka, a Tibetan historian now living in Canada. “They are trying to come up with gimmicks instead of solving the problem.”
Robert Barnett, a Tibet expert at Columbia University in New York, says that Chinese efforts to push New Year’s celebrations are likely to backfire.
“I think people will ask, ‘Why is the Communist Party telling me what to do in my own home?’ ” Barnett said.
At Beijing’s Central University for Nationalities, Tibetan students who had applied last year for permission to hold a Losar celebration informed the university recently that they wished to cancel. But the university told them that the party must go on, said a university source who asked not to be quoted by name.
“Celebrating is compulsory,” he said.
As the holiday nears, tensions are spilling into the open.
On Feb. 14, a 39-year-old Tibetan monk set off a furor when he walked through a public market in the Tibetan plateau’s Lithang county carrying a photograph of the Dalai Lama and chanting, “No Losar.” Hundreds of people reportedly joined the protests, which continued into the next two days, according to the Dharamsala-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy. The group said that Chinese police detained 21 people, some of whom were badly beaten, and that the county has been locked down for the holiday.
Reports say that as many as 20,000 additional soldiers and paramilitary troops have been deployed in Tibetan areas and that in Qinghai province, village leaders were threatened with arrest if they urged people not to celebrate the holiday.
Even among Tibetans, there is a vigorous debate about the campaign to boycott Losar. The holiday, which dates back to pre-Buddhist times, is the most beloved in the Tibetan calendar and involves elaborate rituals and meals. Families traditionally make a soup with special dumplings in which they hide various items — chile pepper, wool, charcoal — and family members read their fortune by which dumpling they pick.
“The very idea that there won’t be any Losar is, let’s admit it, a little bit like calling off Christmas in a Christian community,” one Tibetan blogger complained.
In addition to the tension over the holiday, next month will bring the 50-year anniversary of a failed anti-Chinese uprising, after which the Dalai Lama fled to India. The date has traditionally been a trigger for protests within Tibet, and this year might be especially tense because the Chinese plan to mark the occasion with a celebration of what they are calling “Serf Emancipation Day.” The Chinese government says it liberated the Tibetans from brutal feudal serfdom.
In a preemptive strike against another flare-up of violence, the Chinese have held thousands of Tibetans at a detention center east of Lhasa, according to bloggers in the Tibetan capital.
The Chinese also have launched a crackdown in Tibetan regions on out-of-town visitors without residency permits. Foreign tourists have been banned until at least April, people in the tourist industry said.
“It is going to be a very sensitive time. When the Tibetan New Year is finished, then it will be the one-year anniversary of the riots,” said a Tibetan tour guide who asked not to be quoted by name.
He said foreigners would not be sold plane or train tickets if they tried to get into Tibetan areas. “You can’t get in if they don’t want you in.”
LONDON, England (CNN) — Pro-Tibet activists jumped security barriers and scuffled with police outside the Chinese embassy in London Sunday as hundreds of demonstrators gathered to protest a visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
Protesters carrying Tibetan flags chanted “China Murderers,” and “China Out of Tibet,” as Wen, on a three day trip to Britain, arrived at the embassy.
China has long been criticized by the international community for its human rights record in Tibet. Tibetans are pushing for autonomy from China and greater religious freedom.
Wen was greeted at the embassy by a firecracker display in honor of the Chinese New Year before being escorted inside by security personnel.
A group of protesters attempted to jump over security blockades when Wen’s motorcade arrived at the embassy. Several were wrestled to the ground by police and arrested.
By Dan Southerland, RFA Executive Editor-Tibet’s best-known female writer has evolved from a member of China’s privileged elite into a forceful critic. Despite the loss of her job, the closure of her blogs, and constant surveillance, Woeser reveals through her poems the courage to speak out.
WASHINGTON-”Most of all I wish you courage,” the American poet Pam Brown wrote to her daughter decades ago. “That usually takes care of everything else.”
Courage is a defining trait in the life and work of the contemporary Tibetan poet Woeser.
A banned author inside China, Woeser-the name means Rays of Light in Tibetan-continues to write from her small apartment in Beijing not only poems, but also essays and reports on the current situation in Tibet.
She is under constant Chinese police surveillance.
Chinese authorities locked down Tibet following a major uprising against their rule that began in early March. Paramilitary police have now silenced the voices of protest in Tibet.
But Woeser, 42, still speaks out, publishing essays and poems on a blog hosted abroad.
Forceful critic
A new book provides translations of poems written by Tibet’s best-known woman writer. Many of Woeser’s poems, written in Chinese, are now available in English in a book titled Tibet’s True Heart, from Ragged Banner Press.
Ably translated into English by A. E. Clark, the poems trace Woeser’s evolution from a member of China’s privileged elite into a forceful critic. Her poems provide an emotional counterpart to the dispassionate reason of her prose.
Four years ago, Woeser left her job editing a literary magazine in Lhasa and moved to Beijing when she faced “re-education” for “political errors.” Formal dismissal followed.
Her book Tibet Journal had mentioned Tibetans’ abiding reverence for the Dalai Lama, whom the authorities revile as a “splittist” seeking Tibetan independence.
In 2006, after she posted a photo of the Tibetan spiritual leader with a poem wishing him long life, her blogs were shut down.
Woeser is now suing the Chinese government for denying her a passport. She doesn’t expect to win. But, as she told the Associated Press, she is using the issue as “an opportunity to talk about the unfair treatment of Tibetans over the years.”
In Lhasa during the Olympics, police questioned Woeser for eight hours, accusing her of taking pictures of police and army posts. She was forced to delete her photographs.
‘My faith …led me to write’
Barely five feet tall and soft-spoken, Woeser said in a 2006 interview with Radio Free Asia that she will never stop writing.
“Though my blogs are shut down,” she said, “they cannot stop my speech and my writing.”
“My faith in religion and love for Buddhism largely led me to write. While I was working in an office in Lhasa, I was paid well. But I never felt free, and it bothered me… When I was fired from the job, the incident led me to freedom to express myself in writing.”
Envisioning the past in her poems, Woeser evokes a lost Tibet of undisturbed mountains and monasteries. Then she brings us up to date with images that clash with China’s official depiction of Tibetans as singing, dancing natives hungering for consumer goods.
In her poem “The Past,” Woeser yearns for a Tibet of snow-clad mountains and fluttering prayer flags under divine protection:
The past, the past… such a past!
A host of divinities sheltered our homeland
As a lama keeps watch over souls,
As a mastiff stands guard by the tent.
But the host of divinities is long gone, now,
The host of divinities is long gone.
Understanding the poems
Woeser at the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa in 2005. Photo provided by Woeser. Readers unversed in Tibetan Buddhism will find some of Woeser’s poems challenging.
Fortunately, translator A. E. Clark provides 45 pages of notes at the end of the book. One learns when an eagle symbolizes the Dalai Lama, or when a sarcastic remark alludes to Chinese genre movies.
But sometimes the poems are amazingly direct.
In “Tibet’s Secret,” Woeser likens reading the memoir of Palden Gyatso, a monk who served 33 years in prison, to “watching the creatures of the Land of Snow trampled to dust by foreign jackboots.”
In this long poem, Woeser describes the ordeals of a number of political prisoners, including 14 “singing nuns” who composed songs about prison life and recorded them with a smuggled tape recorder.
Of these nuns, one jailed at age 12, she writes: “I am only wondering why the nuns in that prison, mere teenagers, are not afraid.”
Rediscovering Tibet
The poem “Of Mixed Race” sums up Woeser’s journey from a daughter of the elite to a critic who has rediscovered her roots.
She describes a “a night of rebellion at the close of her youth” in which “hot tears” annul her earlier stance.
In the preface to Tibet’s True Heart, A. E. Clark provides the reader with useful background.
As the daughter of a senior Chinese army commander, Woeser had been taught that “the old Tibet was dark and backward,” and that when the People’s Liberation Army invaded Tibet in 1950, it brought a better life.
But as she explored Tibetan culture, Woeser found herself attracted to Buddhism, “of which she had known virtually nothing in childhood.” She then discovered that China’s Cultural Revolution, which exploded in the year of her birth, had done much to destroy that culture.
Woeser also discovered that her father, the PLA commander, was a closet Buddhist. She remembers her astonishment one day at her parents’ home in the 1980s at seeing him in full military dress go “down on one knee before the Panchen Lama,” the most revered spiritual leader then remaining in Tibet.
Later, Clark notes, Woeser “realized that trips on which her father had taken her mother, ostensibly for her health, had all been pilgrimages.”
When Woeser was forced to leave the Tibetan capital last month, she wrote a chilling poem about the intimidating presence of troops and police there, “The Fear in Lhasa.”
When she posted the poem on her blog, she added a parting shot:
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