Tuesday, April 26, 2011

"Only This Useless Poem, Dedicated to Lobsang Tsepak" By Woeser

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a poem by Woeser that was posted on her blog on April 17, 2011. Woeser's poem is dedicated to Lobsang Tsepak, a monk of Kirti Monastery, Ngaba, who was studying at Beijing's Central University for Nationalities and was arrested on March 25, 2011 for unclear reasons.

Woeser has previously written poems dedicated to Tibetans who are missing or imprisoned, see these "Two Poems for the Panchen Lama" and also "Secret Tibet".

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Wednesday, April 20, 2011

"Remembering The Young Monk, Phuntsog, Who Died from Self-Immolation" By Woeser

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a blogpost by Woeser written on March 22, 2011 for the Tibetan service of Radio Free Asia and posted on her blog on April 19, 2011

Woeser writes about the tragic self-immolation of young monk Phuntsog from Ngaba, Eastern Tibet, who self-immolated on March 16, 2011. As Woeser points, it is an incident reminiscent of the self-immolation of Tapey in February 2009.

Meanwhile the situation in Ngaba remains tense, see recent media reports such as this one from the BBC.

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Friday, April 15, 2011

Blessings for Yushu

Popular photo on Tibetan blogs commemorating the earthquake of April 14, 2010

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Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Replaying the Film “Serf” Won’t Brainwash Anyone! By Woeser

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a blogpost by Woeser written on March 30, 2011 for the Tibetan service of Radio Free Asia and posted on her blog on April 10, 2011.

The Chinese government proclaimed in January 2009 that a festival called "Serf Liberation Day" was to be celebrated in Tibet on March 28 every year to commemorate the "liberation" of Tibetans by the People's Liberation Army. Woeser takes this festival as her starting point and in particular the replaying of the 1963 propaganda film "Serf" on Tibetan TV. Amongst Tibetans, the film is more commonly called "Jampa", the name of the protagonist.
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Wednesday, April 6, 2011

A Tibetan Blogger Asks: "Can I Call 110?"

High Peaks Pure Earth has translated an anonymous blogpost titled "Can I Call 110" that was posted on February 28, 2011 on a Tibetan website Rangdrol.Net.

Rangdrol.Net is a relatively new Tibetan language website and is based in Xining, provincial capital of Qinghai Province. Interestingly it carries the same name as Dhondup Gyal's penname and, as we wrote before on High Peaks Pure Earth, Rangdrol means "self-liberated".

This bold blogpost describes the situation that Tibetans find themselves in today and cites, even though supposedly hypothetically, several concrete examples of injustice and inequality. The phone number for the police in China is 110 (Ch: yao-yao-ling) and is equivalent to 911 in USA or 999 in UK. A subtext to the blogpost is the general impression amongst Tibetans is that the police are overly concerned with splittism whilst criminal acts are rampant and go unpunished.


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