NYC Tibetans observe International Human Rights Day
New York- December 10th, around 50 Tibetans and their supporters observed International Human Rights Day with a rally at the United Nations General Assembly Building. Tibetans and their supporters called for the immediate release of Tibetan political prisoners including Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, a Tibetan religious leader serving a life sentence in Chinese prison and Dhondup Wangchen, a prominent Tibetan filmmaker detained in March 2008 for interviewing Tibetans about their true feelings on Tibet, China and the Dalai Lama. SFT grassroots intern, Sonam Dolker and Tenzin Dolkar, SFT USA Grassroots Director, handed out flyers and gathered petitions for Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, Panchengave her speech urging all people of conscience to support and protect, and fight for those Tibetans struggling to gain their basic human rights and freedom from the brutal Chinese regime. The rally was organized by the regional TYC of NY & NJ.
New York Times Profiles Dhondup Wangchen Ahead of Obama’s China Visit
Just weeks before U.S. President Obama makes his first presidential visit to China, Andrew Jacobs of the New York Times profiled detained Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen who is facing a secret trail for documenting the views of Tibetans in Tibet on the Beijing Olympics, the Dalai Lama and Chinese rule in Tibet.
Read the full article below:
China Is Trying a Tibetan Filmmaker for Subversion
By ANDREW JACOBSCHONGQING, China — A self-taught filmmaker who spent five months interviewing Tibetans about their hopes and frustrations living under Chinese rule is facing charges of state subversion after the footage was smuggled abroad and distributed on the Internet and at film festivals around the world.
The filmmaker, Dhondup Wangchen, who has been detained since March 2008, just weeks after deadly rioting broke out in Tibet, managed to sneak a letter out of jail last month saying that his trial had begun.
“There is no good news I can share with you,” he wrote in the letter, which was provided by a cousin in Switzerland. “It is unclear what the sentence will be.”
As President Obama prepares for his first trip to China next month, rights advocates are clamoring for his attention in hopes that he will raise the plight of individuals like Mr. Wangchen or broach such thorny topics as free speech, democracy and greater religious freedom.
With hundreds of lawyers, dissidents and journalists serving time in Chinese prisons, human rights organizations are busy lobbying the White House, members of Congress and the news media. In some ways, the pressure has only intensified since Mr. Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, raising expectations for him to carry the torch of human rights.
Lhadon Tethong, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, said Mr. Obama had an obligation to press Mr. Wangchen’s case and the cause of Tibetan autonomy in general, given his decision not to meet the Dalai Lama in Washington this month.
That move, which some viewed as a concession to China, angered critics already displeased with what they say was Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s failure to press human rights during a visit to China in February.
“Beijing is emboldened by such moves,” Ms. Tethong said. “They see a weakness in the U.S. government, and they’re going to exploit it. This idea that you’ll gain more through some backroom secret strategy does not work.”
Until now, the case of Mr. Wangchen, 35, has received little attention abroad. Uneducated and plainspoken, he was an itinerant businessman until October 2007, when he bought a small video camera and began traveling the Tibetan plateau interviewing monks, yak herders and students about their lives.
Tsetring Gyaljong, a cousin who helped him make the documentary, said that Mr. Wangchen’s political awareness was sharpened nearly a decade ago, when he witnessed a demonstration in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, that was quickly broken up by public security officers.
“He saw how it was dissolved in two or three minutes and how everyone was taken away,” said Mr. Gyaljong, speaking from Switzerland, where he has lived in exile since escaping from Tibet. “There were no pictures, no testimonies, and he felt like the world should know that Tibetans, despite the Chinese portrayals, are not a happy people.”
Out of 40 hours of footage and 108 interviews came “Leaving Fear Behind,” a 25-minute documentary that is an unadorned indictment of the Chinese government. Although given the choice to conceal their identities, most of his subjects spoke uncloaked and freely expressed their disdain for the Han Chinese migrants who are flooding the region and their love for the Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile since 1959.
In his own comments at the start of the film, Mr. Wangchen said the approach of the 2008 Olympics had compelled him to record the feelings of Tibetans, many of whom were less than enthusiastic about the decision to hold the Games in Beijing.
“We have no independence or freedom, so Tibetans have no reason to celebrate,” said one young woman standing by a road. “The Chinese have independence and freedom, so this is something they can celebrate.”
On March 10, 2008, Mr. Wangchen traveled to Xi’an in central China to hand over the tapes to Dechen Pemba, a British citizen who ferried them out of the country. That same day, a protest in Lhasa turned into a rampage that left at least 18 people dead, most of them Han Chinese.
On March 26, Mr. Wangchen and Golog Jigme, a Buddhist monk who helped him make the film, were arrested. Mr. Jigme was subsequently released.
“It really is a remarkable coincidence,” Ms. Pemba said.
Mr. Wangchen’s family hired a lawyer, but the authorities barred him from court last July, leaving Mr. Wangchen with a public defender.
Before he was forced to drop the case, the lawyer, Li Dunyong, said Mr. Wangchen had told him that he was tortured and that he had contracted hepatitis B while in custody. Since then, he has been held incommunicado. Officials at the Xining Intermediate Court in Qinghai Province, where Mr. Wangchen is being held, would not comment on his case.
Mr. Wangchen seemed acutely aware that his project could get him in trouble. Just before he began filming, he sent his wife and their four children to India, where they live along with his elderly parents.
In an interview from Dharamsala, where she works as a baker, Mr. Wangchen’s wife, Lhamo Tso, said she feared she might not see him again for many, many years.
“As a wife, I’m very sad to be without the person I love so much,” she said. “But if I can separate out that sadness, I feel proud because he made a courageous decision to give a voice to people who don’t have one.”
Dhondup Wangchen Protest in NYC
July 30, 2009, Members from SFT and the 5 New York Tibetan organizations held an emergency protest to call on the Chinese Government to release Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen.
The Chinese government has charged Dhondup Wangchen, the Tibetan filmmaker who made Leaving Fear Behind, of “inciting separatism,” a charge which carries a severe prison sentence in China. His trail will be held in Siling in eastern Tibet (Chinese: Xining, Qinghai Province).
Dhondup Wangchen’s lawyers have been barred from representing him, casting serious doubt over the fairness of his trial. He has been subject to torture while in detention and is in very poor health.
Click here for more photos of the protest.
Click here to send an urgent letter to the Qinghai Provincial Government.
Click here to send an urgent letter to China’s Minister of Justice, Wu Aiying
Click here for ways you can take action for Dhondup Wangchen.
Mining Tibet – A Risky Investment
In early May, I went to a Hard Assets mining investment conference in New York City to have a little chat with the folks representing Canadian mining company Continental Minerals (a subsidiary of Hunter Dickinson), a company that has completed successful exploratory operations near Shigatse in central Tibet, and is preparing to begin large-scale open-pit mining for copper, silver, and gold as soon as this year.
On the 6th floor of the Marriott Marquee Hotel in Midtown Manhattan was a vast showroom divided into a number of rows. Lining the rows were dozens of booths, 3-sided cardboard box stations, staffed with suited, smiling, handsome professionals. Shiny images of beautiful landscapes covered the booth walls; photographs of the ‘grateful and prospering’ communities of Alaska, Peru, South Africa, Indonesia, etc., advertised the mining operations of nearly 40 different companies.
Two colleagues and I, impeccably dressed and walking with confidence, went from booth to booth to hand out brochures. At the top was the logo of Hunter Dickinson (HDI), and the text detailed the reality of the situation on the ground inside Tibet, where HDI’s mining operations are planned.
The reps and investors discussed feasibility studies, the average annual production of millions of pounds of copper or ounces of silver, and the amenability of sites to open-pit mining. They took our brochures happily, and many began reading them before we even made it to the next booth. My heart rate was increasing; we were exposing ourselves as the enemy with every step and every brochure. It was time to head to the real target.
A kind-looking woman in her early thirties was staffing the Hunter Dickinson booth solo. For a brief moment, I almost felt sorry for her. She flashed big white teeth at me as I walked up. I browsed the available materials and looked at the photographs of plush Tibetan grasslands, pristine valleys, and happy Tibetan children holding up peace signs to the camera. My heart pounded, and something awful rose in my throat. Breathe. My eyes fixed on a phrase underscoring the photos:
“Hunter Dickinson: the socially responsible mining company.”
That was all I needed.
“I’m interested in Continental Minerals’ operations in Tibet.”
“Well, certainly. We’ve conducted successful feasibility studies and outlined a deposit of 220 million tonnes of mineral resources…”
I was disgusted before she could finish the first line. Doing my best to steady my shaking hand, I held out our brochure.
“Do you realize that Tibet is under virtual martial law? It is impossible for Tibetans to exercise their internationally recognized right to give free, prior, and informed consent for the production and extraction of their natural resources. How can Hunter Dickinson possibly claim to be a socially responsible mining company?”
Her eyes were huge; her face, scarlet. She blinked four or five times, and shifted in her heels. As sweat gleamed on her upper lip, she breathed in, smiled and said, “because of our operations in other countries.”
As we were escorted out by security guards that day, a palpable buzz had spread throughout the room. Dozens of corporate representatives were very happy that their companies aren’t mining in Tibet.
Tibetans routinely face shocking brutality for speaking out, and yet they continue to do so. As we walked away from the Marriott Hotel that day, on the other side of the world, hundreds of Tibetans were keeping a 24-hour vigil to stop a Chinese company from mining at Ser Ngul Lo Mountain in eastern Tibet.
After nearly five months of nonviolent protest by local Tibetans against the Chinese firm’s plan to mine gold and copper from the mountain considered sacred by these devout Buddhists, approximately five hundred protesters decided to put an end to the standoff…even if it meant their lives. They blockaded the entrance to the road that leads to the mine.
The Tibetans in Markham County, like all Tibetans, have seen the brutality of a Chinese government crackdown on peaceful protesters. And yet – to the disbelief of the Chinese leadership that has for decades allocated vast resources to the work of silencing Tibetans – common Tibetan men and women chose once again to sacrifice their freedom to protect what is sacred to them. And, as the bloody crackdowns of 1959, 1989, and 2008 (to name a few) have undoubtedly demonstrated, their courageous resistance in Markham County these past months could most certainly have cost them their lives.
As the Tibetan protesters stood off against armed Chinese security forces at the base of Ser Ngul Lo Mountain, I felt morosely prepared for the outcome that I had grown accustomed to hearing: X-number of Tibetans killed by random bullets shot into the crowd, arrests, disappearances, torture, the systematic harassment and intimidation of suspected protesters, or a complete information blackout throughout the ‘restive’ area.
The last outcome I imagined was a Tibetan victory.
And yet, on June 8th, it was “agreed in writing that there will be no mining in the area.” The Chinese authorities and local Tibetans resolved the standoff with an agreement that all mining operations would immediately cease, and cleanup plans for the site’s toxic remains are currently being discussed by both sides.
I was shocked. Perhaps it was a ploy to disperse the Tibetans back to their respective homes where they can be more easily arrested. Maybe the Chinese government figured they could give in this time because it was a Chinese firm, and hopefully this wouldn’t affect their contracts with foreign mining companies. Or, maybe their propaganda experts raised this as a good opportunity to feign concern over Tibet’s fragile environment.
Whatever the cost-benefit analysis used by the Chinese leadership that resulted in a Tibetan victory in Markham County, one thing is certain: the Tibetans’ nonviolent and persistent tactics had left the Chinese with an impossible choice – they could back down, or initiate a bloodbath.
Tibetans will continue to resist. And I have a feeling that companies like Continental Minerals have very little idea of what they’re getting themselves into by operating on Tibetan land. The Chinese government is accountable to no one, and a months-long protest, no matter what the outcome, is bad for business. We’ll see how long it takes Continental Minerals to figure that out.
SFT Press Release on Lhasa Torch Relay
For Immediate Release: June 20, 2008
CHINA PARADES OLYMPIC TORCH THROUGH TIBETAN CAPITAL LHASA UNDER LOCKDOWN
Massive Chinese Security Presence Places Lhasa Under Virtual Martial Law for Olympics Propaganda Exercise
New York – Chinese authorities have placed the Tibetan capital under virtual martial law to prepare for a one-day Olympic torch relay, which begins today at 9am, Beijing time. Three months after a Tibetan popular uprising against China’s occupation began in Lhasa, thousands of Chinese police and paramilitary forces have been mobilized in the city. Checkpoints have been set up, paramilitary forces have been marching through the streets, and trucks filled with riot police are patrolling throughout Lhasa.
“China’s parading of the Olympic torch through the Tibetan capital only three months after a popular uprising against Chinese occupation is blatantly political and offensive,” said Lhadon Tethong, Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet. “The Chinese government is wielding the Olympic torch as a tool of oppression over the heads of Tibetans still suffering under China’s brutal clampdown.”
An unconfirmed source in Lhasa has reported that Chinese officials have imposed an unofficial curfew banning unauthorized people from the streets until after 1pm when the torch relay concludes. The same source said that people have been told that they must not look out of their windows overlooking the torch relay route. According to a June 2nd report on China Tibet News, Tibetans have been “severely punished” for the crime of “creating and spreading rumors” regarding the torch relay.
“The torch relay in Lhasa is China’s latest episode in a series of betrayals of everything the Olympics represent,” said Kate Woznow, Campaigns Director of Students for a Free Tibet. “Parading the torch through Lhasa while Tibetans live under virtual martial law is China’s most egregious exploitation of the Games yet.”
(more…)
China’s attacks go virtual and international
China is taking the crisis in Tibet pretty seriously. Now, China or its allies have launched international cyber attacks on Tibetans and their supporters, including SFT. These cyber-attacks are notoriously difficult to trace, but show all the signs of an organized campaign orchestrated by Beijing.
These attacks have been ineffective against SFT, but in a way we’re honored that China or its shadowy allies are throwing the same attacks at us as it/they do against massive U.S. defense contractors.
Reports the Washington Post:
Human rights and pro-democracy groups sympathetic to anti-China demonstrators in Tibet are being targeted by sophisticated cyber attacks designed to disrupt their work and steal information on their members and activities.
Alison Reynolds, director of the Tibet Support Network, said organizations affiliated with her group are receiving on average 20 e-mail virus attacks daily. [...]
A handful of recent targeted attacks shared the same Internet resources and tactics in common with those used in a spate of digital assaults against number of major U.S. defense contractors. [...]
The specificity of information sought in the targeted attacks also suggests the attackers are searching for intelligence that might be useful or valuable to a group that wants to keep tabs on human rights groups, said Nathan Dorjee, a graduate student who provides technology support to Students for a Free Tibet.[...]
Dorjee said the attacks have been unsettling but ineffective, as the Students for a Free Tibet network mostly operates on more secure platforms, such as Apple computers and machines powered by open source operating systems.
“The fact that we’re being attacked with the same resources thrown at multi-billion defense contractors is flattering,” said Lhadon Tethong, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet. “It shows that we really are an effective thorn in the side of a repressive regime.”
To Ottawa! (March 20, 2008)
Closing Everest – what China fears most
On March 10th, anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan People’s Uprising in Lhasa, Explorer’s Web – a website for news and guides about mountaineering and the leading source of information about treks on Mount Everest – reported in an editorial entitled Closing Everest – what China fears most:
This morning, China announced it is restricting world mountaineers from climbing Everest and Cho Oyu. Only Chinese climbers will be allowed, carrying the Olympic torch to the summit in a supposed celebration of sportsmanship and Olympic ideals.
The editorial goes on:
The official version
The Chinese have closed Everest for the Olympic torch relay, although they repeatedly guaranteed they wouldn’t. Xinhua news agency is probably busy putting together a press release to be reprinted all over the world, claiming the measure was taken for crowding and safety reasons.
…and the real one
China’s worst nightmare for the Olympic torch event is not crowding or safety – the mountain will after all re-open after the torch. China’s worst nightmare is a picture of the flame on Everest summit, alongside a climber holding up a “Free Tibet” sign.
This explains why the officials have tried to convince Nepal to close the peak also from the south side during the Chinese Everest climb. But why would such a sign be dangerous? Why fear the two words “free Tibet” so much?
The editorial is accompanied by a number of powerful images, including Tommie Smith and John Carlos giving their black power salute at the 1968 Games in Mexico City, the ‘tank man’ in Tiananmen Square, and SFT’s Tenzin Dorjee on Everest in April 2007 during the protest against China summiting Everest with the Olympic torch (above).
It also includes an image of the Tibetan nun who was murdered by Chinese police when they fired on a group of Tibetans attempting to cross the high mountain pass called Nangpa la to seek refuge in Nepal. This horrific incident was witnessed by climbers from Cho Oyu, close to Everest. It was in fact Explorers Web that first broke the story that shocked the world.
The article then calls on the media to report critically on the Olympics:
The question is also how media will handle the event… Editorial rules are already in place in many cases for how the event will be handled. Of course China knows this, allowing them the impudence to simply close Everest if they want to.
The editorial concludes powerfully:
The world should take note though. History teaches us what happened after the 1936 Olympics in Berlin; and it also [proved] Tommie Smith and John Carlos right. We should take warning while China still is more dependant on us than we are on them.
Signs are often early, but they are always there. What happens on Everest can happen anywhere.
- I support
on Statement on the self-immolation of a young Tibetan in Delhi, India
- Jeanett Clemon
on 2011: What we’ve achieved together for Tibet
- Tashi Wangdu
on Tibetan Activist Sets Himself on Fire: Hu Protests Conclude in Mumbai, Dharamsala
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