#tibet
Kate Saunders, International Campaign for Tibet
A vibrant literary and cultural resurgence has swept Tibet since Spring 2008 when supporters of the Dalai Lama went into open protests against Chinese government policy across the plateau.
A new generation of Tibetan intellectuals, often fluent in Chinese and familiar with digital technology, are daring to refute China's official narrative. Their critiques, expressed particularly in the written word, are among the most wide-ranging indictments of Chinese policy in Tibet for 50 years.
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In response, there is a deepening crackdown by the Chinese government against Tibetan writers, bloggers, artists, and other intellectuals in the public sphere. For the first time since the Cultural Revolution, writers, intellectuals, singers and artists in Tibet are being systematically targeted for their work, and almost every expression of Tibetan identity can be accused of being 'reactionary' or 'splittist'. A popular singer from Amdo (now Qinghai), Tashi Dhondup, is in a labor camp as a result of singing songs referring to Tibetans' grief at the killings in March, 2008. The founder of a Tibetan website promoting Tibetan culture, Kunchok Tsephel, was sentenced in November to 15 years in prison. Bloggers, artists and other intellectuals, including an artist who taught the Tibetan language to nomad children, have 'disappeared'.
Although less well-known outside China than high-profile Chinese dissidents such as Liu Xiaobo and Hu Jia, many of the Tibetan intellectuals named are famous among Tibetans, and are also enduring long prison terms for peaceful expression. Their concerns about restrictions and repression mirror those of their Chinese counterparts.
A new list is now available at www.savetibet.org
Since March 2008, the Chinese government has engaged in a systematic attempt to block news of the arrests, torture, disappearances and killings that have taken place across Tibet. The dangers faced by Tibetans who seek to describe the situation on the ground or simply express their views to the outside world have dramatically increased, which is linked to the widespread availability of the internet and other means of communication and the challenges that poses to China's aspirations for domestic and international message control.
Among those named in the International Campaign for Tibet's report are Tibetans sentenced to long prison terms for simply speaking about the crackdown via email or on the telephone. The penalties attached to these cases indicate a zero tolerance policy for even low-level information sharing in Tibet that is counter to China's obligations to freedom of speech under its domestic law and international human rights law.
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