Meeting the Minister

This week, I got the opportunity to represent the Tibetan voice, on behalf of Students for a Free Tibet, and meet with the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird in his Parliamentary office. I was able to speak on behalf of Tibetans in Tibet and raise the urgent issue of the current crisis in Tibet. While I’ve lobbied and met with Parliamentarians and government officials many times before through my work with Students for a Free Tibet and Parliamentary Friends of Tibet, I’ve never felt so much pressure or so nervous before such a meeting, knowing that I was able to meet with a real game-changer at such a critical time for our movement, feeling almost like the weight of Tibet was on my shoulders.

While it was an excellent opportunity and step forward for our movement to be able to meet with the Foreign Minister at this time, personally express the urgency of the situation of Tibet, and get his seemingly genuine views on China, a lot more work awaits us and our movement with the extremely fast-changing face of the global political environment – this was very apparent to me during our meeting. But we mustn’t give up, and as long as we ALL take action to help our movement at this extremely significant and historic time, there’s nothing we won’t and can’t regret… ONWARDS!

ps. We need the Minister to make a strong public statement on Tibet. You can help by writing to him here: https://secure3.convio.net/sft/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=833