"May the Deities Protect the Snowland" By Woeser

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a blogpost by Woeser that was originally written for broadcast on Radio Free Asia on December 8, 2010 and posted on her blog earlier today on December 10, 2010.

Although the starting point of the blogpost is the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, Woeser takes the opportunity to write about Tibetans who share a similar fate. Woeser particularly draws parallels with imprisoned Tibetan writer Dolma Kyab. There is an in-depth introduction to Dolma Kyab's case as well as an extract from "The Restless Himalayas" in English translation in "Like Gold That Fears No Fire", a publication by the International Campaign for Tibet and available for download. Dolma Kyab has also been made an honorary member of PEN.  

Liu Xiaobo: “Han Chinese Have No Freedom, Tibetans Have No Autonomy” By Woeser

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a blogpost by Woeser that was originally written for broadcast on Radio Free Asia on October 13, 2010 in Lhasa and posted on her blog on October 18, 2010.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo on October 8, 2010, created international headline news. In this article from her blog, Woeser congratulates Liu Xiaobo and recounts his articles and views on Tibet. As she notes in her article, Woeser has known both Liu Xiaobo and his wife, Liu Xia, for several years and, as noted before on High Peaks Pure Earth, Woeser was the only Tibetan amongst the original signatories of Charter 08.

"Everything Is Getting Worse But" by Woeser

High Peaks Pure Earth has published an article by Woeser that was written for the first issue of the Hong Kong Magazine “Dongxiang” (Trend) on January 5, 2010 and published on her blog on January 17, 2010.

"Everything Is Getting Worse But" 

by Woeser

"So many horrible things have happened proving that this regime is brutal".

This is what a foreign journalist who had been to Xinjiang earlier last month, said to me. Later on, at the end of last month, right before Christmas Eve, he stood in the cold wind in front of the entrance to the Beijing Court waiting for the controversial Chinese intellectual Liu Xiaobo, who was being interrogated inside. I told him that on the very day of Liu Xiaobo’s interrogation, there was in fact another piece of bad news related to Tibet. A respected religious leader, the 53-year-old Buramna Rinpoche was wantonly framed by this brutal political regime. He had been deprived of his personal freedom since 18 May 2008 which ended with facing an eight and a half year, dark prison sentence.

Reserved as he was, the journalist could not hold back his anger, not to mention myself. Moreover, I felt defeated. Last year, when the court interrogated Buramna Rinpoche for the first time, I thought we could probably save him from this disgraceful frame-up simply with the help of the attention, media reports and appeals of the outside world. Many people have been working hard on this, Rinpoche’s relatives, Beijing’s human rights lawyers, renowned international media representatives as well as numerous human rights organisations.

However, just as the year before, last year was a year in which we suffered disasters. As proven by news from different regions in Tibet, there are still many Tibetans secretly being arrested, sentenced and harshly punished. I have been trying my best to record all these happenings on my blogs but all of them are such bad news, which makes us really despair. Just as President Obama arrived in Beijing referring lightly to “fundamental rights, which all humans possess”, the two authors Kunchok Tsephel and Kunga Tsayang were harshly punished. At the same time, there are several human rights cases which haven’t been made public and there are many people who have not even obtained any sympathy from the outside world. When foreign journalists were interviewing me, I told them that there might still be a series of human rights disasters to come. Shortly after, a Xining court sentenced Dhondup Wangchen to 6 years because before the Olympics he filmed the documentary “Leaving Fear Behind” which expressed the thoughts of the Tibetan people.

To tell the truth, at the time we placed hope upon that American President. Of course, it is ridiculous to entirely place one’s hope on other people, but the American President, who always claimed to protect freedom and human rights, will invariably give hope to many men and women in the world. Furthermore, he recently even won the Nobel Peace Prize. However, who would have thought that when facing a brutal regime his legs would turn to jelly? He actually even set a bad example. It’s not that we want to take out all our anger on him but he really did set a bad example. After he stood in awe, full of admiration, in front of the Great Wall – the symbol of totalitarianism – leaders from other countries visiting China later on, also kept the two words “human rights” to themselves.

I am not saying that in this country, all the misfortune which dissidents, Tibetans, Uighurs, or other minorities have come across, was merely caused by being abandoned by those Chinese politicians who use high-sounding words. Yet, it is certainly not completely unrelated. All things rely on each other; all beings are dependent on each other, not to mention in today’s globalisation, the world’s climate has already changed, everybody in the world is already Twittering. Hence, the existence of a brutal regime is in fact a universal tragedy for humanity and not just limited to one nationality or country.

Everything is continuing to get worse. Before the advent of year 2010 Buramna Rinpoche was wronged and punished. This means there will be a region which will never be peaceful again. Just like another religious leader named Tenzin Delek Rinpoche who was framed seven years ago, even after seven years, there are still tens of thousands of people who signed their names or affixed their thumbprints [on a petition], and several thousand people protested in a sit-in for him. Consequently, several hundred people were arrested, and many people were beaten. The turmoil this incident caused has not quietened down yet.

Nonetheless, at the beginning of the New Year I came across a very moving piece of writing by a Tibetan in his early twenties. He used Tibetan and Chinese to write the following: "We often speak of nationalities, often speak of the future, sometimes we will persist in doing so; although there are people out there criticising and suppressing us, we should never bear a grudge, let alone take revenge. All the misfortune we have come across originated from causes we sowed in our past. We should try our best to find inner peace and be merciful. Nevertheless, we should not give up trying to strive for the rights all humans deserve. As long as we are merciful, not resentful and continue with a calm mind to make efforts gradually, there will be one day when our wishes come true and we can freely bathe in warm sunshine."

January 5, 2010, Beijing

"Where Does the Crime "Subversion of State Power" Come From?" by Woeser

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a blogpost by Woeser that was originally written for Radio Free Asia on January 12, 2010 and posted on her blog on January 20, 2010.
This article mentions Dhondup Wangchen and Liu Xiaobo. Dhondup Wangchen was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment on December 28, 2009 for making the documentary film "Leaving Fear Behind". The sentence was reported by international media, including Reuters, and attracted the attention of international human rights groups, including Amnesty International.

Liu Xiaobo's sentencing to 11 years imprisonment on December 25, 2009 for his role in drafting Charter 08 provoked international outcry.

Where Does the Crime "Subversion of State Power" Come From?

by Woeser

Recently there was once again some bad news that Dhondup Wangchen was sentenced to 6 years in prison. Four days before the end of 2009, a sentence was handed out to him in secret in Xining. Neither he nor his relatives, no-one received the relevant procedures which must be carried out by the legal departments in China. The 35-year-old Amdo farmer, son to elderly parents, husband to a thin and vexed wife and father to four young children, had been detained since the end of March 2008 for making a 25 minute documentary and suffered such a heavy punishment, on average 3 months imprisonment for every minute. Moreover, if counting the sentence from the date he was tried, then the calculation would be as follows: 4 months for every minute!

Dhondup Wangchen was charged with "subversion of state power." A foreign journalist asked me on the phone, what do I think about this accusation? And in front of my eyes appeared a scene out of Dhondup Wangchen's film that I can never forget, a scene that makes me shed tears every time when I watch it again: an old monk sitting in a dark corner, choking with sobs, saying: "For the Dalai Lama to come back is my greatest wish and dream but it doesn't look like this will be realised...Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama, I pray to you ... Whenever I hear his name, then I am filled with faith, devotion and deep deep sadness. The situation is hopeless. I feel exhausted. It's as though I were walking alone, with no destination, endlessly. "

Also in front of my eyes appeared a recollection by British Tibetan Dechen Pemba who met him on completion of filming: "Within minutes of our meeting, I was struck by his determination and drive to accomplish something that he felt was important—to depict the injustice of life as a Tibetan under Chinese rule. As one of his interviewees so eloquently said, “We Tibetans living in the PRC are like stars on a sunny day, we can’t be seen.”

I told the journalist that Dhondup Wangchen did not have any professional training and used a simple video camera to record the true underlying feelings of so many Tibetans to reflect the oppression and discrimination they are subjected to in their living conditions, and to voice their real wishes. The purpose was so that the outside world would understand what is in the hearts of Tibetans, if this is "subversion of state power," then the regime is too inhumane, too weak. Therefore Dhondup Wangchen's imprisonment, from another perspective, has also confirmed the authenticity of the documentary film, and one can fully understand why people outside Tibet say that the lives of the Tibetan people have been ravaged. On my blog, there are Chinese people leaving comments saying that "the Chinese Communists ... ... such a heavy sentence for this amateur photographer shows the Chinese Communist Party being too intolerant, and they are making themselves a laughing stock," Essentially though, this is not at all a question of being magnanimous or not.

Former Czech President Vaclav Havel, one of the signatories of that year's "Charter 77", addressed President Hu Jintao in an open letter a week ago protesting the illegal imprisonment of Chinese independent intellectual, Liu Xiaobo, to 11 years. In the letter, he asked the following questions where "the court in Beijing shamefully sentenced" Liu Xiaobo accusing him of "inciting subversion of state power": "There is nothing subversive to state security when intellectuals, artists, writers and academics exercise their core vocation: to think, re-think, ask questions, criticize, act creatively, and try to initiate open dialogue. ... There is nothing subversive to state security or damaging to future prosperity when citizens act guided by their own will and according to their best knowledge and conscience, when they associate among themselves to discuss and express peacefully their concerns and visions about the future development of their society. On the contrary, a country's material and spiritual future is undermined when its citizens are not allowed to act, associate, think and speak freely."

In fact, we are living in a country where the spiritual has already been undermined, when someone like Dhondup Wangchen who has been the conscience of mankind is consigned to a dark prison, I am afraid the future of this country will sink into hatred and brutality.

January 12, 2010, Beijing

Charter 08

Liu Xiaobo

The biggest China news story at the moment is “Charter 08”, a document signed by over three hundred prominent Chinese citizens all united in their calling on reform for the political system in China. As Perry Link, who translated the Charter into English, tells us, Charter 08 “was conceived and written in conscious admiration of the founding of Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, where, in January 1977, ‘more than two hundred Czech and Slovak intellectuals formed a loose, informal, and open association of people…united by the will to strive individually and collectively for respect for human and civil rights in our country and throughout the world.’” Václav Havel was one of the key figures behind Charter 77 and has been a long-time supporter of Tibet and a symbol of freedom in his own right. The two recently met in Prague where Havel said "I dare say we have become good friends". Read Havel's editorial in the Wall Street Journal in support of Liu Xiaobo here.

Chinese intellectuals and liberal thinkers are fond of writing this kind of charter or petition to their government. Liu Xiaobo, a high-profile intellectual, writer and activist, was sentenced to three years in labour camp on 30th September 1996, for writing a joint letter addressed to China’s President Jiang Zemin supporting Tibetan self-determination and also calling for dialogue with the Dalai Lama. He was the first Chinese person to be sentenced for speaking up for Tibet.

Liu Xiaobo and Zhang Zuhua – both of whom were detained by police in Beijing on 8th December - spearheaded this particular Charter 08 initiative. Liu Xiaobo, alongside Wang Lixiong, was also a crucial figure behind this year’s “Twelve Suggestions for Dealing with the Tibetan Situation” which High Peaks Pure Earth had translated into English and published by the New York Review of Books. It is interesting to note that there are overlaps between the signatories of both documents, at least 28 names signed both “Charter 08” and “Twelve Suggestions”. Only one Tibetan, however, has signed “Charter 08” and that is Beijing based poet and blogger Woeser who just days ago on her blog wrote a touching tribute to Liu Xiaobo. Liu Xiaobo still remains in police custody.


Signatories of both “Charter 08” and “12 Suggestions…”:

Liu Xiaobo, (Beijing, writer)

Zhang Zuhua , (Beijing, Constitutional Scholar)

Yu Haocheng (Beijing, Legal Scholar)

Ding Ziling (Beijing, Professor)

Jiang Peikun (Beijing, Professor)

Sun Wenguang (Shandong, Professor)

Ran Yunfei (Sichuan, Scholar)

Pu Zhiqiang (Beijing, Lawyer)

Liao Yiwu (Sichuan, Writer)

Jiang Qisheng (Beijing, Scholar)

Zhang Xianling (Beijing, Engineer)

Wang Debang (Beijing, Writer)

Zhao Dagong (Shenzhen, Writer)

Jiang Danwen (Shanghai, Writer)

Wen Kejian (Zhejiang, Scholar)

Tian Yongde (Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Human Rights Defender)

Zan Aizong (Zhejiang, Journalist)

Liu Yiming (Hubei, Freelance Writer)

Che Hongnian (Shandong, Freelance Writer)

Zhang Jiankang (Shaanxi, Legal Professional)

Zhang Xianyang (Beijing, Ideologist)

Ye Xiaogang (Zhejiang, Retired University Faculty Member)

Yu Meisun (Beijing, Legal Professional)

Li Changyu (Shandong, Teacher)

Shi Ruoping (Shandong, Professor)

Wan Yanhai (Beijing, Public Health Expert)

Wang Xiaoshan (Beijing, Media Worker)

Ouyang Yi (Sichuan, Human Rights Defender)