I dont have any new cooking videos right now, as its been pretty hectic after getting back from India. These days I seem to have really great friends who have amazing mothers who tend to cook for me, so I havent had the opportunity to share some recipes but i will!  I did start to make a vegetarian momo video while I was out in Sikkim but didnt want to upload it because it was unfinished and there were a few interruptions which you will notice in the video. After attending Tibet lobby day in Washington DC, I met two “fans” who inspired me to just get this video out there. I have edited it a little, but this is the best i could do with what little footage I had. Momo la just stole the show.

While in Dharamsala, I found a really great school called Esukhia, majority of the teachers have graduated from Sarah College and have had extra teacher training for students to get the best learning experience. I had a great time practising my reading and writing and I am still continuing my classes via skype at only 3Euros an hour!  If you want to improve your Tibetan or even learn from scratch, it is defiantly worth checking out. I even got my younger sister enrolled!

Thank you & Enjoy

This internship was first launched in 2007 by the Canadian Parliamentary Friends of Tibet then headed by the Hon. Senator Consiglio Di Nino. The first internship, six weeks long, saw 4 young Tibetan-Canadian students hired and placed in the offices of various parliamentarians. It was a great first trial run and success, with three of the interns being hired into the offices of parliamentarians following the internship, including one in a Foreign Minister’s office, and the fourth subsequently finding employment in a government department.

Participants of the first internship program on the steps of Parliament

The second internship, in 2010, saw the number of interns hired more than double, with 9 Tibetans being hired into the offices of various Parliamentarians across all political parties.

Participants of the second internship

The third and last internship took place in 2012, with seven young Tibetan students being hired into offices at Parliament Hill.

Participants of the third internship meet with Kalon Dicki Chhoyang and Sikyong Lobsang Sangay

During all three internships, the participants were taken on tours of Parliament and various other historic sites in the nation’s capital to get a better understanding of Canadian history and politics. Meetings with Tibetan leaders, Canadian Aboriginal leaders, and Canadian Parliamentarians were also organized for the interns to help them see the Tibetan issue through various lenses. Interns were also taken to watch Parliamentary proceedings and meetings to grasp a deeper understanding of the Canadian political legislative system. Needless to say, connections were made with the Parliamentarians themselves and many of them have gone on to become much more vocal and active for Tibet, no doubt with the influence of the Tibetan interns they had in their offices.

This brings me to why I am writing about the internship on Lhakar Diaries today. The Canadian Parliamentary Friends of Tibet (PFT) is now under the leadership of Member of Parliament David Sweet, who recently took over as Chair of PFT after Senator Di Nino retired last summer. David Sweet has been extremely vocal and active for Tibet since becoming Chair, and has vowed to continue the internship program this year. His office has worked extremely hard over the last few months at securing numerous Parliamentarians to take in Tibetan-Canadians for seven-week internships this summer. However, the deadline is quickly approaching – this Friday, March 29^th – and I’ve been told that applications aren’t flying in which is really worrying.

Over the last few years, Tibetans and Tibet support groups have been working extremely hard at actively lobbying legislators globally – to get the opportunity to speak for Tibet to the change-makers in our respective countries. The internship program allows us to do just that – but actually work INSIDE the offices of our Parliamentarians and help influence their policies and actions, and not just for a 15 minute meeting like with lobby days, but for several weeks. The gyami embassies have all the money in the world to lobby governments, so we have to grab opportunities like this to create change for our movement.

There’s also the fact that this is not just a short-term initiative, but one with long-lasting effects as well. These internships provide the young participants with the knowledge and connections to go on to become effective leaders in the Tibet movement. Of all the intern participants, I can’t think of one who did not become much more active in the Tibet movement, returning to their communities as smarter, more mature and effective leaders. Just a few of the numerous notable actions of the young interns following their internships include:

• Getting hired by Parliamentary Friends of Tibet and pushing for and organizing the re-activation of the internship program.
• Getting Students for a Free Tibet Canada invited to a conference at Parliament Hill to sit on a panel to present the issue of mining in Tibet to legislators.
• Getting former parliamentarian bosses to sign the ‘Stand Up for Tibet’ pledges.

All in all, just through the internship program, an incredible 20 Tibetans have worked in the offices of Parliamentarians – something that I doubt has been replicated in any other country in the world.

This however is no easy feat. One large hurdle with the PFT Internship program is that some of the offices only offer unpaid internships, meaning that those interns have to be able to cover their own housing, food, and other expenses for roughly 2 months without pay. This can be quite costly and probably intimidating for students. So I’m making an appeal to Tibetan communities in Canada to please support the PFT internship program. I urge you to please contact MP David Sweet’s office to inquire about how to best offer financial support for the interns. Along with the financial support, these interns will feel the much-needed moral support by their communities to work for Tibet.

Here in Ottawa, the Ottawa Tibet Film Festival committee is offering several bursaries of up to $500 for interns, from the proceeds of our recent festival. Over the years, a few Tibetan organizations in Canada have provided financial support to the internship program, and I really hope these and new ones will step up to support this year’s internship as well.

I also appeal to young Tibetans in Canada to please please please consider applying for this program. I’ve already described above just how important this program is for Tibet – but it will also help you in your future endeavours whichever path you take. This internship has provided participants with invaluable knowledge, useful connections, an impressive addition to their resumes, and not to mention life-long friendships. Besides the work, this internship provides participants to meet other like-minded, bright, young Tibetans. It’s always surprising how little people apply for the program, and I hope it’s not due to a lack of confidence. Parliament Hill can seem like an intimidating place; however, if 20 other young Tibetans have already done it, you can too! Like all things in life, if you want something, you have to be proactive and just giv’er [classic Canadian saying]!

You can find information and a link to the application here.

Something else to think about is, like many things in life, if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. If the internship program garners little to no interest by Tibetans, it’s less likely that it will continue. The organizing offices won’t see reason to take part in the program again in the future if there is no interest from our side.

At this critical time when we need to take action for Tibet more than ever, I hope you’ll see the value in this program and apply, support, and spread the word to any young Tibetans you know who should apply. If you have any questions about the internship, please don’t hesitate to ask questions here, or to leave me a comment.

At the core, the Tibet issue is a political one. So we need to become politically aware, engaged, and active if we want our country back.

Please note: You don’t have to be a student to apply for the internship.

February 13th marked the 100 year commemoration of the 13th Dalai Lama’s Proclamation of Independence. I know, that’s a mouthful. Imagine trying to say that to a reporter from AP, or in my case, to the barista who saw my awesome Tibetan Independence Day sticker innocently asking what it was all about. On Feb 13: In over 30 cities worldwide, the centennial of the 1913 Tibetan Proclamation of Independence was commemorated with ceremonies, concerts, rallies, and public talks. In New York, we had a protest at the Chinese Embassy which included this incredible direct action raising a mini version of the proclamation on the embassy itself. Check out the video below.

Last Sunday there was a panel at Tibet House with an incredible line up of Robert Thurman, Elliot Sperling, Glenn Mullin, Jamyang Norbu. It was kind of like a Rangzen All-Star line up if you know what I mean. For those lucky enough to attend we were hit over and over with gems of historic knowledge as they discussed everything from the political savvy of the 13th Dalai Lama, to the historical Treaties between Tibet and Mongolia, relations between Tibet and India and other fun factoids that indeed prove over and over again that Tibet was once a free and independent country.

I put together a story (my first time using storify!) of some of my fav tweets from the event.

Last Lhakar Wednesday I also got to be a part of an awesome FlashMob in Union Square where Tibetans and supporters joined together to highlight the staggering number of self-immolations in Tibet. The action was meant to echo the voices of the 107 teenagers, monks, nuns, fathers and mothers, writers and teachers who have self-immolated for freedom in Tibet, each participant holding a photo of someone who had self-immolated in Tibet, stating their name and age out loud one and a time in the middle of the Square.

Also this past week, SFT released a brand new video of the Harlem Shake. Normally, I am completely against anyone trying to do the Harlem Shake except folks who actually hail from Harlem, but this week we’ve seen the Harlem shake used as a form of protest in places like Tunsia and Egypt and now New York City! But for realz, before watching SFT’s parody video which is aimed to poke fun at Xi Jinping please do yourself a favor and  watch this Melissa Harris-Perry video breaking down the appropriation of the Harlem Shake.

Since most of our contributors are busy gearing up for March 10th in their respective cities I thought I’d post this anyway, even if it is a Friday. There have been tons of events in the lead up to March 10th and now there are stil two more days until Tibetan Uprising Day. It’s fun to see what everyone else has been up to this week whether its SFT UK lobbying the European Parliament with Kirti Rinpoche or Tenzin Lobsang’s awesome Lhakar Update from Ottawa. For those in the big cold country of Canada the Ottawa Tibet Film Festival is still going on for a few more days. For more information about where you can join March 10th protests around the world, visit Stand up For Tibet to find a local protest near you. This Sunday, please join Tibetans and supporters worldwide in marking the 54th anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day. Hundreds of thousands of us are dedicating this day to a free Tibet. I hope this Sunday you will join us.

Bod Gyalo! Free Tibet!

One of the many Ottawa Tibet Film Festival posters around Ottawa posted in front of Parliament Hill

The Ottawa Tibetan community, although very small in size (about 20 Tibetans here, half of them babies :p) have spent the last half year or so working on organizing the first ever Ottawa Tibet Film Festival. This festival will screen 5 Tibetan films over two days this week and has received a lot of support from the community so far. It’s the first time something like this has been done here so it’ll be really interesting to see how it goes this weekend. Our ad in the Metro Ottawa paper got published today which was really exciting to see! We also had one of our members do a radio interview earlier today with a local radio station. It was really encouraging to hear the radio host really interested and asking many questions about what the situation inside Tibet is like. For more information on the festival, visit: www.OttawaTibetFilmFestival.com

Ottawa Tibet Film Festival ad in Metro News Ottawa today

Then tonight, the Tibetan community had a chance to have an intimate momo night with Canadian Member of Parliament, and Chair of the Canadian Parliamentary Friends of Tibet David Sweet, with whom we had co-organized a film screening of Dhondup Wangchen‘s ‘Leaving Fear Behind‘ at Parliament. We got the opportunity to speak with him, and Dechen Pemba, Editor of High Peaks Pure Earth (among many other things!), who will be a guest speaker at the Ottawa Tibet Film Festival, even presented a letter to the Member of Parliament on behalf of Lhamo Tso, the wife of political prisoner Dhondup Wangchen, appealing for support for Golog Jigme, who is currently missing.

Dechen Pemba with MP David Sweet

Anyway it’s been a very Lhakar day, and the rest of the week will be spent busily preparing for the film festival. By the way, if any of you have friends in Ottawa, send them our way. Peysho!

The Ottawa Tibetan community with Dechen Pemba, Ugen Badheytsang (SFT Canada National Director), Tsewang Dhondup (a gunshot wound survivor of the 2008 Uprisings in Tibet), and Kushok Jamyang, with Canadian Member of Parliament and Chair of the Canadian Parliamentary Friends of Tibet David Sweet.

I remember the process being a tedious one – lifting heavy box after box full of old documents back and forth from my table to the records administrators, and hours and hours hunched over dusty, old papers decades old – no Google or ‘Ctrl-F’ function to help us out. It was frustrating at times, and you really needed a lot of patience, but when you struck gold, there was no better feeling.

We were able to find numerous documents that helped illustrate Tibet’s status through Canada’s eyes. The Canada Tibet Committee published many of these documents, which span from 1944 to 1969. I can’t recall why it was only these years that were published or if we found documents outside this time range at all, but regardless, here are a few of the notable sections.

“China is determined to swallow…Tibet…”

- Secretary of State for External Affairs, January 8, 1944

“Inner Tibet, the domain of the Dalai Lamas, which is ruled by priests and completely pervaded by religious influence, is certainly no natural exercising-ground for Communism. The lamas and nobles, whose grip upon the country has so far, I believe not been loosened…”

- Leon Mayrand for Acting Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, March 7, 1949

“External say Dalai Lama is in Lhasa with no present intentions of fleeing and that National Assembly is in emergency session there…”

- High Commissioner for Canada, New Delhi, India, November 7, 1950

“I find it hard to see how the question of suzerainty comes into the matter. First of all the Chinese never ratified the agreement by which Chinese suzerainty but Tibetan autonomy were agreed to. In the second place even if it had been agreed to, suzerainty is hardly the same as sovereignty, particularly when autonomy is part of the bargain. In the third place, if China owned Tibet, there would be no point in having discussions with the Tibetans about mutual relations and certainly no point in sending an army to conquer it. The sending of an army is surely a confession that the matter is not domestic.”

- High Commissioner for Canada in India, New Delhi, November 16, 1950

“In view of the possibility that the problem of Tibet may be discussed in the United Nations, a memorandum on the international status of Tibet has been prepared in the Legal Division. A copy is being forwarded for your information by bag. The concluding paragraph reads as follows: “The question is, should Canada consider Tibet to be an independent state, a vassal of China, or an integral portion of China. It is submitted that the Chinese claim to sovereignty over Tibet is not well founded. Chinese suzerainty, perhaps existent, though ill-defined, before 1911, appears since then, on the basis of facts available to us, to have been a mere fiction. In fact, it appears that during the past 40 years Tibet has controlled its own internal and external affairs. Viewing the situation thus, I am of the opinion that Tibet is, from the point of view of international law, qualified for recognition as an independent state.”

- Secretary of State for External Affairs, November 21, 1950

“In 1912, the new Chinese Republic reasserted the Chinese claim with the declaration that Tibet would, in the future, “come within the sphere of internal administration.” This declaration was repudiated by the United Kingdom government…”

- Chiefs of Staff Committee Paper, Department of National Defence, October 6, 1950

“There has been a history of intermitten strife and guerilla warfare in Tibet ever since the Chinese Communist invasion in 1950.”

- Chiefs of Staff Committee Paper, Department of National Defence, October 6, 1950

These are just a few of the notable sections you can find in the report. Also found were letters written to the Canadian government from the Tibetan government around China’s invasion. I remember finding it, at the same time, fascinating and extremely difficult when finding letters written by a young Kundun to the Canadian government asking for support from China’s aggression. The letters from the Tibetan government all indicate a sense of urgency and difficult-to-swallow desperation, fearing China’s ultimate bloody conquer.

Along with letters to and from the Canadian government, you can find information about United Nations meetings and votes about Tibet, and the varying stances of other governments. It’s also really interesting to note how Canada’s position on Tibet fluctuates from 1944 to the 1960′s (and to compare this to the present government’s as well).

Just like how Students for a Free Tibet has been able to get the 1913 Proclamation of Tibetan Independence translated into numerous languages, to spread the reach of our assertion of independence, I wonder if people in other countries have done similar research into what has been communicated by their countries regarding Tibet’s status as an independent nation. It would be really interesting to compile this and have real, concrete evidence readily available as to the matter of Tibet’s independence, similar to what Jamyang Norbu la has compiled in his ‘Independent Tibet’ document, to add to our ammunition to counteract China’s relentless and baseless claims to Tibet.

If you want to take a look at some of what was conjured up during the research into the Canadian government’s communications about Tibet, the Canada Tibet Committee published the documents on their website, which you can find here: http://tibet.ca/_media/PDF/secret_canada_tibet_file.pdf

Hope everyone had an eventful Tibetan Independence Day with their flags raised loud and proud!

British invasion of Tibet under the command of Younghusand.

Harris brings back to life documents and images from a range of colonial archives, and includes accounts and fictions published by British officers, ethnographers, soldiers and Asia-Tibet enthusiasts of that time to piece together how the myth of the exotic Tibet-an came into existence in the West. Her analysis is based on exploring the discursive formation of how the West came to imagine Tibet and its inhabitants. She describe how representations of Tibet in these works were being informed and produced by the ideologies of that time —placing different societies in racial evolutionary scales with the West serving as the most advanced. As Harris points out, this framing placed Tibet in a desirable exotic light; as a society capable of having their own civilization and worthy of western attention. A society that was, importantly, displayed through the desire to accumulate Tibetan “artifacts.” This aspect of her argument articulates Steinmetz’s emphasis on “symbolic capital” (capital in status, not material, form) (2007). According to him, one of the ways colonial officials without hereditary status (the non aristocracy) back in imperial Germany were able to attain status through the accumulation of symbolic capital by fashioning themselves off as experts with access to native knowledges and who demonstrated this expertise through possession of native materials that they seized from regions they invaded and occupied.

As explored by Harris, colonial British officials on the Younghusband mission in Tibet were able to sell artifacts they stole during the invasion of Tibet on their return to Britain. Some of these objects can now be viewed in different museums across the west that belong to the private collections of the families of those officials or private collectors. Those who worked as private ethnographers for the British administration were able to make careers off their oftentimes-uninformed “expertise” gleaned from their interactions with Tibetans during the invasion of Tibet.

One of the most abused picture of Tibetan nun’s to this day, wearing wigs to keep their heads warm, taken by John Claude White from the Younghusband mission.

Harris does a superb job at showing how the images, descriptions, and artifacts of and about Tibet-ans did the intended work of informing the British public of how to view the Tibetans. She also does not hide the fact that these representations of Tibet also served to make Tibet a desirable space for potential British colonization. This dream was however, interrupted by India’s independence and gave way for the Chinese to intervene in Tibet.

Although I cannot say enough on how historically robust and well thought out Harris’s first half of the book is, I was not as satisfied with the second half of her book on “Contemporary Tibetan Art.” She does a wonderful job explaining how contemporary Tibetan art came to be: in Lhasa. That it emerged as a way to subvert Chinese authoritarian gaze on Tibetan art-ists. Despite superb details on the art, artists, and the messages embedded within these art works, and even with the additional information about the times in which these works were produced, I was not satisfied with the lack of focus on such artworks’ audience.

Gonkar Gyatso’s “My Identity.” One of the most well known Tibetan contemporary artist.

Unlike the first section of her book, she does not go into who the intended and possible unintended audience for these works were. While she loosely mentions the western collectors who seem to be interested in these works for similar reasons earlier collectors were intrigued, other than mentioning the added excitement over assumed exotic natives capable of producing “modern” works of art, I saw very little discussion on a Chinese audience, and close to nothing on a Tibetan audience. I do, however, acknowledge the difficulty of such a task, it may even require a completely different project to look into those audiences.

While reading about the different artists (all based in or from Lhasa) and their work, I found myself asking; for whom are these works intended? Who is the artist producing these works for? Almost all of the artists Harris mentioned in her book produce work intended for an audience through exhibitions, showings, and installations. I am interesting in knowing whether these contemporary Tibetan artists produced specific works with an intended audiences in mind during the time of its construction. I would also be interested in who the unintended audiences were and why.

Jamsang’s Buddha series.

Though Harris tells us that some of the works by artists she explored hint at how some of the artists identify with not one specific identity: Tibetan or Chinese, but a possible global identity, she also points to the particularity with which these artists use iconic Tibetan symbols, especially Buddhist imagery in their works. I personally see tension between this particularity and the “global” identity, this assumed global citizenry or humanity. Through an exploration of the possible audiences, the section on Contemporary Tibetan Art could have been more powerful in describing how representations of Tibetan-ness or global-ness has manifested in the intended and unintended audiences of these works.

Works Cited:

Harris, C. E. 2012. The Museum on the Roof of the World: Art, Politics, and the Representation of Tibet. University of Chicago Press.

Steinmetz, George. 2007. Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. Chicago, IL, USA: University of Chicago Press.

Water Snake 2013 by Puntsok Tsering

Happy 2013 to all our readers out there!

Now that the holidays are over it’s back to work here at LD. After a long and busy holiday I thought what better way to start the new year than to post about two different things reaffirm the core of the Lhakar movement. Fiona McConnell and Tenzin Tsering have written an article for Open Democracy entitled, Lhakar: Proud to Be Tibetan. Tenzin Tsering is a research officer at the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Dharamsala and Fiona McConnell is a political geographer and Research Fellow at Trinity College, University of Cambridge.

I think this article is more than worth a read if you have the chance and a timely piece that helps me gain some perspective on how people around the world are discussing Lhakar in all different kinds of contexts, whether its online, in the classroom, or an inspiring speech at a rally outside the UN. Their article retraces the steps of the Lhakar movement, analyzing the way Tibetans have reclaimed their identities around the world through different Lhakar related activities and campaigns, even to the extent it was being promoted by the Prime Minister of the Tibetan Exile Government himself. Check out this brief glimpse into their piece which I think gives a fairly well rounded answer to what the Lhakar movement is about.

(FOR READERS: I’ve defined the following terminologies to smooth out the read:

Assumption: Representation.

Invisibility: Erasure: Silences.

Formation: as how things are formed

Discourse: narrative: discursive: polemics: writings: texts: as the mediums in which the conqueror, narrates the story of their conquest and the people they conquered, in the way they like to imagine themselves, to themselves.

Colonizer: Oppressor: Conqueror: Aggressor:  as the governance or group that is exerting power on another group.

The Orient: Colonized: Oppressed: Conquered:  as the group that the governance or more powerful group is exerting power on.)

What does an ethnographic discourse on the invisibility of a colonial empire in the 21^st century look like? What does that invisibility contribute to, or rather take away from, the experiences of Tibetans inside and outside Tibet? In this post, I examine the historical and contemporary discourses on Tibet that frame Tibet as either not colonized or about human rights, which, I argue, silences Tibetan aspirations for Nationhood. Aside from contextualizing Tibetan subjectivities, I contribute to the ongoing discourse on how ethnographic narratives can re-construct the invisibility of existing colonial empires and justify their presence as a given right rather then foreign.

Map of Tibet

 Fernando Coronil problematizes maps as having:

“often served as a medium for representing the world as well as for problematizing its representation. From Jorge Luis Borges’s many mind-twisting stories involving maps, I remember the images of a map, produced under imperial command, that replicates the empire it represents. […] In this exact double of the empire’s domain, each mountain, each castle, each person, each grain of sand finds its precise copy. The map itself is thus included in the representation of the empire, leading to an infinite series of maps within maps […] Thus, history makes the map no longer accurate, or perhaps turns it into a hyperreal representation that prefigures the empire’s dissolution” (1996:52).

As a young girl, I too ran into Coronil’s “infinite series of maps within maps.”

When I was six years old, I learned how to draw the map of Tibet. In order to memorize how to draw this, I was told by my older Tibetan friend, whom I called chocho (older brother), to remember that it looked like an upside down boot. Soon I had become very good at recognizing and drawing the map without any help. In fifth grade, some students and I were looking at a map of the world and we were pointing at where our parents or we were from. I remember searching for the upside down boot shaped Tibet on the map for several minutes and became distressed when I realized I could not locate Tibet. One of my friends asked me how Tibet was spelled; after I told her, we went over the map to search again. I found Tibet, however, it was placed in a larger map of China. The part of the map that had Tibet sectioned off did not look like the upside down boot I had memorized, and it looked significantly smaller than the map I remembered drawing. When I reached home that evening, I told my father the dilemma I had run into when trying to locate Tibet and how the Tibet I saw on the map was located inside China and how it did not look like the one I remembered drawing. I told him Amdo and Kham had disappeared, and only Lhasa was visible. My father saw my confusion and told me that Amdo and Kham were still there, that they were now on the map marked as part of Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan. However, his explanation was not enough for me. It did not make sense to me that Tibet was put inside China and Amdo and Kham were now being called by Chinese names. This was the first time I realized that the land I called Tibet in its entirety, which included Amdo and Kham, was not recognized as such by the rest of the world. “But China invaded Tibet, why do they think Tibet is part of China?” My father did not know how to respond. He told me that the rest of the world understood Tibet to be part of China and that was something other Tibetans like himself, were trying to change. As I grew older, I came to realize that all Tibetans I came to know, including those from inside Tibet, had to face this question and contest it every time we introduced ourselves as Tibetan.

Map of China’s Tibet

In my adulthood, the question I had asked when I was ten has now become more important and pressing. The self-immolations in Tibet have now climbed in the 100s and most of them have taken place in Amdo, recognized as Qinghai by those in China. As foreign and Chinese journalists, pundits, academics, and scholars record, and, therefore, re-construct additional narratives on Tibet-China through the current situation in Tibet; it has become important to disturb (Foucault 1994[1966]:30) their assumption of Tibet as part of China.

In the following post, I take this assumption, this representation, seriously. Coronil states, “[u]nlike cartographers’ maps produced under imperial order, the representations I wish to examine are discursive, not graphic, and seem to be the product of invisible hands laboring independently according to standards of scholarly practice and common sense” (52). Using Coronil’s framework, I ask the following question: how did the contemporary ethnographic discourse on Tibet by non-Tibetans, specifically in the pro and anti China camps, come to assume Tibet as part of China? And how did this assumption exclude the recognition of Tibet and China as occupying a colonial relationship? This post will attempt to disturb this assumption within the postcolonial framework to locate how, when, and why, the popular discourse on Tibet has come to assume Tibet as part of China, and, therefore, not a colonized territory.

The Discursive Formation of Tibet in China’s Imagination:

Heeding Foucault’s advice, I hope to examine; who was producing this ethnographic discourse on Tibet, what types of works were they producing, how were they producing this work, and why were they producing this ethnographic discourse—what purpose was it serving?

China’s Propaganda painting depicting all the “ethnic minorities”

In a recent article in The New York Times by Xu Zhiyong, a Han Chinese lawyer and human rights advocate, Zhiyong ends his article on the self-immolations of Nangdrol and others like Namdrol, with some powerful last words:

“I am sorry we Han Chinese have been silent as Nangdrol and his fellow Tibetans are dying for freedom. We are victims ourselves, living in estrangement, infighting, hatred and destruction. We share this land. It’s our shared home, our shared responsibility, our shared dream — and it will be our shared deliverance” (Zhiyong 2012).

Although Zhiyong’s closing words seem to acknowledge the state-sponsored inequality and violence on Tibetans with his apology. However, with his use of the word “we” he misses the point that the immolators and other Tibetans he had met on his journey were trying to communicate when they told him “We are Tibetan.” Zhiyong’s “we” reminds me of Gregory’s section—who’s work contextualizes Said’s Orientalism in the US’s construction of the middle eastern-orient-Palestinian-Iraqi-Afghani-terrorists to justify and carry out its imperial projects in the middle-east—on the conflict between imagined narratives by the colonizer and the colonized played out in the colonized space-land: the Israeli’s saw themselves as fighting for the “right of homeland” as scripted in the Zionist imagination while the Palestinians saw themselves as fighting against Israeli “invaders” (2004:Ch5). Zhiyong’s use of the word “we” is employed empathetically to include Tibetans and Hans together as Chinese citizens against unequal state policies in order to “share this [Tibet] land,” this “shared home.” However, in this all-inclusive homogenized “we,” Zhiyong fails to understand that Tibetans, such as those who have immolated, do not want to be part of this “we” but want to be “Tibetan.” In fact, according to historian Tsering Shakya, “the notion of Tibet as an integral part of China is a recent invention by the Communist Party in its process of nation building” (2002). Self-immolators, such as, Ngawang Norphel on the 20^th of June this year shouted pro-Independence slogans for “freedom” that are in direct conflict with Zhiyong’s “we.” Zhiyong comes to interpret the “freedom” that the “Tibetans are dying for,” to mean freedom from unequal state policies that also affect him, as a Han. He does not, however, see that the “freedom” Tibetans want is beyond state policies, that Tibetans from the past (uprisings in 1959, during Cultural Revolution, late 80s to early 90s, 2008) and in the present have demanded from the Chinese State. That they do not want to be China’s citizens but instead, want to be Tibetan citizens of a historically sovereign Tibet. Zhiyong’s “we” assumes the Chinese State’s official narrative; that Tibet is part of China.

“ethnic minorities” performing infront of the Potala, Lhasa, Tibet

Zhiyong’s conflict in understanding Tibetan assertion of being “Tibetan” in contrast to his Chinese citizen “we,” and my conflict, as a ten year old, in not understanding why everyone, except for Tibetan, seemed to assume Tibet to be part of China, resonates with what Achille Mbembe’s called “Colonial Entanglement”in Dennison’s book Colonial Entanglement (2012). As described, “Achille Mbembe defines colonial entanglement as including ‘the coercion to which people are subjected,…a whole cluster of re-orderings of society, culture, and identity, and a series of recent changes in the way power is exercised and rationalized.” Pushing against what she sees as the ‘discrepancy between prescription and practice’ in many colonial histories, […] where even the most personal of moments are fraught with debates over political discourses” (7). But how did this conflict of understanding and/or confusion arise in the first place? In other words, how did Zhiyong, along with most of China’s population and the contemporary narrative on Tibet, come to envision Tibet as part of China? To disturb Zhiyong’s notion of Tibet as “our shared home,” I turn to interrogate the “effects of ethnographic discourse” on Tibet produced starting from the time of the Qing dynasty (Steinmetz 2007:xix).

Qing and Nationalist Empire:

When talking about the historical and political relationship between Tibet and China, most scholars on both pro and anti China sides of the spectrum point to the Qing dynasty (from 1905 to 1911) to historically frame the beginning of the political conflict between Lhasa and Qing administrations (Shakya 1999:xxii). According to historian Tsomu, Qing administration’s desire to control Lhasa’s administration, and, therefore, Tibet, was prompted by the impending threat of Western imperialism (2012:3). The Qing administration became increasingly insecure as its neighboring countries and kingdoms became colonies under various European empires. The threat of Western powers penetrating its own territories, according to Ho, prompted the Qing administration’s interest in incorporating Tibet and securing its “frontiers” (Ho 2008:210-46). This insecurity was furthered by the British invasion in 1904 (Tsomu 2012:3) and the rise of Nyarong Gonpo Namgyal’s power in Kham (19) (see Woeser for more on Nyarong Gonpo). According to Tsomu, in order to take “effective control over Lhasa” the Qing needed to first secure its dominance over the border province, Kham (4). Here we find the motive for why the Qing wanted to take control of Kham, and, therefore, Lhasa: insecurities about Western imperialism.

“Western-Imperialism” against China propaganda art-wrok

Although the Khampas opposed the Lhasa administration’s authority, they united under the 13^th Dalai Lama’s call to “defend Buddhism” against the Qing in 1912 (5). However, the Nationalist (also called Kuomintang) revolution that broke out across the Qing Empire ended Qing threat in Kham and, therefore, Lhasa, resulting in the 13^th Dalai Lama’s declaration of Tibet as an Independent nation (5). The threat of Han-domination, however, did not end with the Qing. After the Nationalist party came to power (from 1912 to 1949) following the fall of the Qing, the Nationalists took up where the Qing had left off with Kham. Along with military attempts to take control of Kham, the Nationalists implemented a textual strategy to incorporate Kham “into China’s national imagination and understood as a core territory of the new China” (5). According to Tsomu, “[d]uring this period, there was a new effort to translate works [on Tibet] by Western authors” while producing their own works to 1) write Kham and, therefore, Tibet into China’s national history, and therefore, Chinese imagination,  and 2) support claims of western imperial interest in Tibet, while simultaneously justifying their presence in Tibet (6). Here we find how the Nationalists planned to make Tibet part of China’s national and historical imagination: (re)production of ethnographic discourse on Tibet.

At that time, Ren Naiqiqiang, funded by government authorities (11), was one of the leading contributors to the construction of Chinese discourse on Kham (6). Ren’s work on Tibet, and others he influenced, reproduced the orientalist (Said 1978) framing of Khampas, and, therefore, Tibetans, as “primitive” and in need of “civilizing” from the translated works of early western writers on Tibet (Tsomu 2012:10-1). His discursive work on the Khampas placed them in China’s primitive past, as a civilization left behind in China’s primitive history, that needed the Nationalist State’s help to “modernize” Tibetans to bring them on par with the rest of China’s civilization (Trouillot 1991. Tsomu 2012:16). The purpose of the ethnographic discourse produced at the time in framing Tibetans as Chinese (through the construction of Tibetans in China’s historical past) helped to explain and justify the Nationalists presence in Tibet and the construction of Tibetans as “primitive” helped to justify the Nationalists projects in Tibet (for more on this topic, see Woeser’s “The Hero Propagated by Nationalists” and “The Xinhai Revolution And Tibet”).

Ren also surveyed and constructed his own “standard Map of Kham” to serve as part of the project of “incorporating the Kham regions into the Chinese national imagination” (15). These same maps were later used “as blueprints […] by the People’s Liberation Army [PLA] to advance [in]to Tibet” (15). The Peoples Republic of China (PRC, from 1949 to present) not only employed the same maps and ethnographic discourse on Tibet to justify their invasion-colonization, but also reproduced the same evolutionary ideological framing of Tibetans as primitives-savages in need of their modernizing-civilizing projects to justify PRC’s presence in Tibet. The ideological framing of the Tibetans that the PRC has inherited from the British-Qing-Nationalist-era (Stoler & McGranahan 2007:25) seems to have reproduced and solidified in how the PRC construct and continue to construct the socio-political-economic-cultural “native policies” on Tibetans.

Going through the historical genealogy of how the ethnographic discourse on Tibet was constructed—Qing, Nationalist, and PRC, drawing from earlier works by western Orientalists—helps to explain why the map I encountered in fifth grade placed Tibet inside China, and why Zhiyong imagines the Tibetans and Hans as “we,” and, therefore, Chinese.

This historical genealogy also reasserts Steinmetz’s emphasis that “the colonized were not the authors of their own native policy, even if they sometimes revised it or selectively reinforced certain parts of it,” instead; these policies were constructed and asserted by the colonial State (2007:xix). However, the contemporary discourse on Tibet (both pro and anti-Tibet) fails to frame Tibet in the continuing discourse in pre and post colonial framework, instead, it has become further fixed in the dichotomized discourse between humanitarianism or China’s right to rising national power placed against Western domination (Sautman 2003). (I define contemporary notions of humanitarianism as, a globalized-homogenized concept of human rights that blur and deny particularity to indigenous peoples of different background’s historical-political-individual experiences). This dichotomized discourse further discourages any discussion on Tibet’s political right to sovereignty, including individual agency to resist China’s policies (Yeh 2009), and ignores China’s colonial role in Tibet and its socio-economic-political empire aspirations in Asia, Africa, and South America (McGranahan 2007). So, what are the discursive formations that prevent Tibet from being placed in a colonial framework with China?

Tibet in Modern Discursive Imagination:

The other night, I was talking to a friend from outside my discipline. He asked me what I was working on, and I replied “something on colonialism.” Puzzled, he retorted, “but I thought colonialism was over a long time back.” When I questioned him further on what he meant, he pointed to how former European colonies were no longer under colonization. I point to this example because colonization is often generally assumed to be specific to Europe and, therefore, over (Stoler & McGranahan 2007). This is not an assumption that only my friend makes, but is normalized in the popular discourse, especially in the scholarship by the Left (Chomsky 2012). The problem with this reductive logic, however, is that it fails to acknowledge past existing forms of empires with colonies that were not exclusively European (i.e. Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian, African, Egyptian, etc.). This is also problematic because it centers the history of the world, even about empires, on Europe. In addition, this logic also ignores contemporary forms of colonialisms (i.e. Palestine, Tibet, East Turkestan, Hawaii, Kashmir etc.) and imperialisms (i.e. US-EU exerting power in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, to name a few, China’s ventures in Africa, Asia, and South America). However, it is important to historically contextualize how this assumption, in particular to Tibet, came to be.

In 1949, as the PRC began to advance from its borders into Kham, World War II had come to an end and the former colonies of European colonization outside of Tibet and China were experiencing decolonization (180). As a result, according to McGranahan, “[d]isavowal of imperial status” at that time was becoming “de rigueur” (176). Although imperial status was going out of style, it did not mean empires disappeared; they simply went “underground” (180). As McGranahan argues, contemporary forms of imperial projects simply changed their tune by condemning old forms of domination associated with European colonialism, while functioning anew under “national languages of defense, development, and global responsibility” (176). For the U.S., its domination during the Cold War functioned under political intervention through Cold War discourse to free other parts of the world through democratization (i.e. Parts of South America, Congo, Philippines, parts of the Caribbean islands) while claiming to champion anti-colonial efforts (186).

U.S. propaganda poster during Cold War

According to McGranahan, “[i]f [the era of] Decolonization discouraged colonialism as a specific form of imperialism, it ironically opened the world to other forms of similar domination” (175). During this time, the PRC was able to carry out colonial domination of Tibet while taking full advantage of the “moment of decolonization” (186). The PRC’s promotion of itself as anti-capitalist and anti-western imperialism during this era of decolonization was also useful in their efforts to keep other nations that Tibetan officials were lobbying (Shakya 1999:52,59,221) from directly intervening on behalf of Tibet (at the U.N. for example). In the present context, the PRC’s accusation of western interest in Tibet as motivated by the West’s aspiration to exert its imperial domination to keep a rising China down (Hillman 2009. Sautman 2012) is employed effectively enough to keep most of the popular discourse in the West from directly acknowledging Tibet as a colonized space. This is not to deny the West (in particular, the U.S.) as an imperial power in the present, but rather, to acknowledge that this narrative is used to move the focus away from Tibet’s colonization and its right to political sovereignty, to a narrative about western domination over China: It avoids talking about Tibet.

Anti-CNN protest by Chinese Nationalists during 2008

As previously argued, the PRC inherited its theoretical framing and narrative of itself as developing Tibet to modernize the Tibetans from their undeveloped-backwardness from its predecessors, the narrative, however, has now evolved to frame itself in the humanitarian discourse: one about helping the Tibetans develop, in order to modernize. Their discursive method has also advanced at home and abroad to include—along with additional types of texts—movies, images, music, plays, and cartoons to further embed Tibet-an in China’s historical imagination and narrative (Norbu 2010. Zeitchik & Landreth 2012). Still, how could China be colonial when it grants Tibetans citizenship, something that classical-European colonization denied its colonial subjects?

It is true that China allows all Tibetans the right to Chinese citizenship but “citizenship does not rule out colonization” (188). The citizenship that China offers may suggest political inclusivity for the Tibetans, Zhiyong’s “we,” it does, however, come with limited features (strict policies targeting Tibetan language and spiritual institutions) that does not acknowledge nor accommodate the Tibetan identity. The “characteristics of contemporary Chinese imperialism [in Tibet] include accumulation, territorial expansion, direct rule, military intervention, and the simultaneous cultivation of inclusive and exclusive categories of national belonging” (180).

Film poster for “Serf”. Produced by August First Studio in 1963. From Woeser’s article in High Peaks Pure Earth.

The denial of China as a colonial power in Tibet on both sides of the camp (pro and anti-China) directly and indirectly supports China’s narrative attempts to cover up its relationship to Tibet as colonial. The problem with these narratives, and the popular discourses that imitate its form, takes away, as argued by Yeh, the different individual experiences and agencies of Tibetans who are experiencing China’s colonization directly by those inside Tibet (2009) and indirectly by those who have escaped into exile, and-or facing transnational experience-displacement in host nations.

Conclusion:

In concluding, I have explored the historical and contemporary ethnographic genealogy of both pro and anti China narratives to show how they re-construct the invisibility of China’s visible colonization of Tibet and assist in justifying and hiding the physical colonization in Tibet. Not recognizing China’s on going physical colonization in Tibet, as argued, is part of the reason why the conversations on Tibet gets (sometimes strategically) locked into a narrative about China’s right to National growth by pro-China narrators or Tibetan’s right to human rights by pro-Tibet narrators, rather then a narrative that includes Tibet’s right to sovereignty. Both sides of the conversation directly and indirectly help to cover-up the existing realities of what colonization has done and continue to do in Tibet. It is part of the reason why Tibet, according to the world map, no longer exists. Though the subjectivities of Tibetans inside and outside are different, my own personal narrative as a Tibetan exile reflects this erasure, this silence, on Tibet’s colonization. This erasure affects all Tibetans regardless of background.

This invisibility also leads to the confusion that prompted George W. Bush to ask “Why do they hate us?” out loud after September 11^th(Gregory 2007:20), or Zhiyong to ask “do you [Tibetans] hate the Hans?” to the Tibetans he met inside, or the Israeli to ask “Why do Palestinians hate us?” after another bombing in Israel. Further, I have attempted to show the discursive formation of how the colonizer subdues and narrates the story of its conquest to itself and others, through the employment of, what Said described as, “the Orient [in this case, Tibetans] needed first to be known, then invaded and possessed, then re-created by scholars, soldiers, and judges who disinterred forgotten languages, histories, races and cultures in order to posit them—beyond the modern Oriental’s ken—as the true classical Orient that could be used to judge and rule the modern Orient” (92). In problematizing the discourse regarding China’s relationship with Tibet as colonial, I hope my work has further revealed the reality of Tibet as that of a colonized space. In addition, I hope my work contributes to the ongoing intellectual discussion on the different ways in which contemporary forms of imperial and colonial formations are justified and allowed to exist. My work is also an appeal for Tibetans to continue asserting and contextualizing Tibet as a colonized territory in any mediums thinkable because saying it repeatedly makes this truth come to life.

Works Cites:

Chomsky. 2008. Interview by ZNET Sustainer. Chomsky on Tibet Vis-a-vis Palestine.. PRAGOTI. ”ZNET Blogs.” 25 Mar. 2008. Web. 15 Dec. 2012. <http://www.pragoti.in/node/681&gt;.

Coronil, Fernando. 1996.  “Towards Post-Imperial Geohistoric Categories,” Cultural Anthropology 11(1): 51-87.

Ho, Dahpon David. 2008. “The men who would not be amban and the one who would: four frontline officials and Qing Tibet policy, 1905-1911.” Modern China 34, 2 (Apr.):210-45. 1905-1911

Dennison, Jean. 2012. Colonial Entanglement: Constituting a Twenty-First Century Osage Nation. University of North Carolina Press.

Hillman, Ben. 2009. “50 Years On, What Do We Know about Tibet?” East Asia Forum. The East Asian Bureau of Economic Research (EABER) and the South Asian Bureau of Economic Research (SABER)., 16 Mar. 2009. Web. 15 Dec. 2012. <http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2009/03/16/50-years-on-what-do-we-know-about-tibet/&gt;.

Foucault, Michel. 1994[1966]. “Introduction,” in The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. New York: Vintage. Pp. 1-39.

Gregory, Derek. 2004. The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. Oxford: Blackwell.

Mbembe, Achille. 2001. On the Postcolony, in Colonial Entanglement: Constituting a Twenty-First Century Osage Nation: 66.

McGranahan, Carole. 2007. “Empire Out-of-Bounds: Tibet in the Era of Decolonization,” in Imperial Formations, Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, pp. 187-227.

Norbu, Jamyang. 2010. “THE HAPPY LIGHT BIOSCOPE THEATRE & Other Stories (part I).” Shadow Tibet. Shadow Tibet, 10 Feb. 2010. Web. 15 Dec. 2012. <http://www.jamyangnorbu.com/blog/2010/02/10/the-happy-light-bioscope-theatre-other-stories-part-i/&gt;.

Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage. Selections.

Shakya, Tsering. 1999. The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A history of modern Tibet since 1947. Columbia University Press.

Shakya, Tsering. 2002. “Blood in the Snows.” New Left Review. New Left Review, May-June 2002. Web. 15 Dec. 2012. <http://newleftreview.org/II/15/tsering-shakya-blood-in-the-snows&gt;.

Sautman, Barry. 2012. “Tibet’s suicidal politics.” East Asia Forum. The East Asian Bureau of Economic Research (EABER) and the South Asian Bureau of Economic Research (SABER). 21 Mar. 2012. Web. 15 Dec. 2012. < http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2012/03/21/tibet-s-suicidal-politics/&gt;

Sautman, Barry. 2003. “Cultural genocide and Tibet.” Tex. Int’l LJ, 38, 173.

Steinmetz, George. 2007. Devil’s Handwriting : Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. Chicago, IL, USA: University of Chicago Press.

Stoler, Ann Laura, and Carole McGranahan. 2007. “Introduction: Refiguring Imperial Terrains.” in Imperial Formations: 3-42.

Triouillot, Michel-Rolph. 1991. “Anthropology and the Savage Slot: The Poetics and Politics of Otherness,” in Richard G. Fox, Recapturing Anthropology. Santa Fe: SAR Press, pp. 17-44.

Tsomu, Yudru. 2012. “Taming the Khampas: The Republican Construction of Eastern Tibet.” Modern China.

Yeh, E. T. 2009. “Tibet and the problem of radical reductionism.” Antipode, 41(5), 983-1010.

Zeitchik, Steven, and Jonathan Landreth. 2012. “Hollywood Gripped by Pressure System from China.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 12 June 2012. Web. 15 Dec. 2012. <http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-et-china-censorship-20120612,0,7403326.story&gt;.

Zhiyong, Xu. 2012. “Tibet Is Burning.” New York Times. New York Times, 12 Dec. 2012. Web. 15 Dec. 2012. <https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/opinion/tibet-is-burning.html?_r=1&&gt;.

Above is a short video shot by the Lhakar Diaries team at Art for Tibet, with the help of rising Tibetan filmmaker, Tenzin Tseten. Special thanks to TenTseten for all his help!

In the last few years, along with the Lhakar movement, we have seen a sea-change in the Tibetan artistic world. Whether it be writers, filmmakers, painters or musicians, Tibetans across the plateau are becoming not only more prolific artists, they are quickly becoming key actors in the fight for survival. Risking life and limb to express what is in the hearts and minds of Tibetans, they represent a new threat to the Chinese regime. Their works are eloquent (Woeser), subtle (Pema Tseden) and never fail to challenge the simplistic Chinese views of us Tibetans as mere barbarians. It’s not just the monks you have to worry about now, CCP thugs.

Most recently, writer Dolma Kyab aka Lobsang Kelsang Gyatso (who was arrested in 2005 and is currently serving a 10 and 1/2 year sentence for writing “Himalaya on Stir,” a manuscript discussing Chinese oppression), was awarded the “Liu Xiaobo Courage to Write Award” by the Independent Chinese PEN Center.

And yesterday, November 4th, Tibetan thangka painter Dorje Lungdup (25), made the ultimate sacrifice and self himself on fire to send a message of protest. With his last breaths he called for freedom and the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet.

The contributions of Tibetan artists are thus obviously priceless in more ways than one. This is why Art for Tibet, and the solidarity of artists outside of Tibet, is so meaningful. With over 50 artists taking part in the event, it was an incredible sight to see so much art from more than 50 acclaimed artists including Shepard Fairey, His Holiness the Karmapa, Mark Borthwick, Ryan McGinness, Melodie Provenzano, Pema Rinzin, ROSTARR, Tenzing Rigdol, Ang Tsherin Sherpa, The Sucklord, and so many more. The message of solidarity was clear: never underestimate the power of art in uniting people.

And here’s the good news: you can still be a part of Art for Tibet with SFT’s online auction, now extended to December 12th! There are lots of new pieces, and lowered reserves and opening bids on many incredible works of art. Find something special for that special someone, or just nab a sweet piece of art for yourself!

For the past month, as the number of self-immolations climbed, my adviser and I sat down several times, trying to figure out activities we can do to highlight the situation better here at the University I’m currently studying at. Then last week, I saw the video campaign with messages to world leaders launched by SFT spreading in the web-sphere. My adviser, Carole McGranahan, called me and my friend, Ben, who is also doing his PhD related to Tibet, into her office to ask if we wanted to do our own videos for the campaign.

At first I was hesitant. I told her I had been thinking about it but was having second thoughts because I plan to go to Tibet at some point in the future and didn’t want to hurt my chances of getting my visa to go in. Carole was supportive but reminded me that there were individuals related to Tibet who have gone to Tibet and China despite having been related to high profile activist-related activities in their past.

Instantly I went, “Oh yeah!” and remembered Lhadon Tethong, Tashi Rabgey, and Elliot Sperling to name few highly known individuals within the Tibetan diaspora context who have gone to Tibet and China.

In 1998, Lhadon Tethong and Tashi Rabgey shared the stage to speak to thousands on Tibet at the Freedom Concert in DC.

Both Tethong and Rabgey have continued to be highly visible figures in the Tibetan diaspora context with their work, at different capacities, towards empowering Tibet at-large. Since their speeches at the Freedom Concert in 1998, both women have continued, in different but sometimes similar paths, their work and have travelled to China and Tibet.

Lhadon was not only able to secure a visa but was residing for a short period in China in 2007, writing and reporting daily about Tibet in the runner up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics on her blog Beijing Wide Open. Tashi Rabgey has continued to travel to Tibet and other places to continue her work that focuses on empowering communities, including our own. Both of these women have taken very different paths since 1998, however, both women have still stayed true to themselves and their shared goal to better the cause of Tibet, be it grassroots political movement or capacity building through community development on-or-for the Tibetan plateau.

A few years back, I had the pleasure of listening to Professor Elliot Sperling give an explosive and politically charged lecture on Tibet through skype while he was IN China. He was, at the time, visiting several Chinese universities giving lectures on Tibet.

After reminding myself again of these highly visible individuals in exile who have pushed the boundaries for what you can do for your community in their youth and continue to be challenge those boundaries in their adulthood, I wondered why I was hesitant in the first place—especially when I have yet to make any splashes that will have the Chinese take notice of me? Why start making compromises now and what else will I have to compromise later? I recorded this short video calling on President Obama shortly after reflecting over my own fear.

My initial reluctance for making this video was based on fear of the unknown. The idea of, “would I not get a visa to Tibet if I: made this video, attended this talk, went to this vigil, shouted in this protest, talked to this journalist, and so on?” The likelihood of you not getting the visa to Tibet because of A, B, C, and D are true but the same can be said for you not getting that visa for not doing anything and being completely silent. Sure, maybe you can reason to yourself that not taking part in something you feel passionate for may provide you with a better chance for getting the visa to Tibet, but that same assurance can be guaranteed by simply changing your name legally on your passport without ever having to give up anything you feel strongly about. The possibility and loopholes on how to get around that system is endless.

The increase in the number of self-immolations have been weighing down on my mind and I’ve been especially frustrated with the lack of coverage by international media but when it came time to give voice to the situation I instantly thought about hurting my chances of going to Tibet and possibility of becoming useful inside. We all want to go there someday, and some of us have plans on how we can be useful inside, however, why start compromising now when most of us have barely begun that journey?

This is not to make some of you feel guilt nor is it a plea for you to make a video. Your journey is your own, how you choose to speak is your own choice and should remain that way. However, saying “don’t be afraid, speak up!” is not to say that we should treat words lightly.

“It is never my custom to use words lightly. If twenty-seven years in prison have done anything to us, it was to use the silence of solitude to make us understand how precious words are and how real speech is in its impact on the way people live and die.”

– Nelson Mandela at the closing address of the 13th International Aids Conference in Durban, South Africa on July 14 2000.

Silences, like words, also have power but for different reasons, for those who hold themselves back from speaking: Don’t compromise who you are and your own voice for fear of the unknown.