Now living in another Chinese hell, Brown Beijing, Woeser, Tibet's
best-known writer, remains a repressed-but-unflinching journalist,
intent on making a record for those who may follow.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Communists keep a close watch on her -- and a
closer, secretive, and violent presence in Tibet, where, out of sight,
the death toll is mounting, no matter what the Chinks say.
---------------------------------
"A Lone Tibetan Voice, Intent on Speaking Out"
"Writer Seeks to Chronicle Events in Areas Hit by Crackdown"
"
By Jill Drew
Wa****ngton Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 6, 2008; A10
BEIJING -- Each morning, it is the same. She rises and heads to her
computer to write, to pierce the silence that otherwise shrouds events
these days in Tibet, her homeland.
Woeser, a 41-year-old writer who uses only one name in the Tibetan
tradition, knows she risks arrest. Hers is one of the only Tibetan
voices within China that still reaches the outside world, now that the
Chinese government has arrested hundreds and essentially blacked out
most communication from Tibetan-inhabited areas.
Though she lives in Beijing, Woeser still has contacts across the
Tibetan plateau, and she has been using them to funnel information
onto her blog since the deadly March 14 riots in the region's capital,
Lhasa. The government has said that the riots and the unrest that
followed were caused by violent separatists. Woeser is constructing an
alternative narrative -- one of protest sparked by long-festering
resentments against Chinese repression of Tibetan culture and the
Buddhist religion.
It has not been easy. Late last month, hackers attacked Woeser's site
and locked her out. Previously, security officials had put her under
house arrest. A policeman had warned her to stop writing about Tibet.
"I told him, 'Apart from Tibet, I have no interest in writing,' " said
Woeser, the world's best-known contem****ary Tibetan writer. "I want to
record all of the history and be a witness to what is happening now."
Government Control
As Olympic torchbearers prepare to scale the Tibetan side of Mount
Everest and envoys of the Dalai Lama have begun informal talks with
their Chinese counterparts over the current crisis in Tibet, a global
battle rages over how to interpret what is happening in the remote
Himalayan region. But almost entirely absent from the discussion are
voices of Tibetans living within Tibet, the people who can describe
everyday life and let others judge whether they are being wronged.
"The main voice is hers," said Robbie Barnett, director of modern
Tibetan studies at Columbia University in New York. "She is one of the
very, very few Tibetans who have been able to put their name to the
discussion and have managed to stay afloat."
Woeser's writing finds no favor in the Chinese government. Her books
are banned here and three different blogs she maintained on Chinese
servers have been shut down in the past two years -- on government
orders, a friend at one of the Internet companies told her. Her
current blog, http://woeser.middle-way.net,
is hosted on a computer
server in the United States, but even that one tem****arily suc***bed
to an attack April 26.
"It's not only me. Many scholars do not have freedom of speech. Their
blogs and Web sites are also blocked," Woeser said in a telephone
interview from her 20th-floor apartment in China's capital. Although
her house arrest has been lifted, officials from the local security
bureau keep watch at her building, and she says she is often followed.
"This reflects the Chinese government's strict control over speech,"
she said. "They don't want me to leave this kind of record, to talk
about what happened in Tibet in a real way. This voice is what the
government does not want to hear."
Another Tibetan writer and researcher, Jamyang Kyi, was arrested April
1 at her office in the state-owned television station in Xining,
capital of Qinghai province. A well-known singer and television
presenter, Jamyang Kyi wrote about women's rights. She once wrote a
poem to Woeser, praising her for her work.
With the living words spread forth from your heart
I see the footprint of our ancestors in the mountains of the Plateau.
An Unlikely Dissident
In many ways, Woeser is an unlikely dissident. She was born in Lhasa
to members of the Communist Party. Her father was a deputy commander
of a local unit of the People's Liberation Army, making his family
well-positioned to benefit from China's control of the region.
"I used to believe the army came to Tibet to set Tibetans free,"
Woeser said.
When she was 4 years old, her family moved to a Tibetan area of
Sichuan province. After the worst ravages of China's Cultural
Revolution had passed and schools reopened, Woeser and her friends
were educated in Chinese. No studies were offered in the Tibetan
language. Although she can speak Tibetan, Woeser, like many of her
generation, never learned to read or write her native tongue.
She returned to Lhasa after getting her college degree in Chinese
literature. "My way of thinking was not based on reality," she said.
"All I wanted to do was write poems."
She had not thought much about Buddhism before returning to Lhasa; as
party members, her parents practiced no religion. But once she was
back in Tibet, Woeser said, she was drawn to the teachings of Buddhism
and began to cherish its culture.
Her politics, too, began to change. After a friend returned from Hong
Kong with an autobiography of the Dalai Lama, Woeser devoured it. When
China intervened in the selection of the 11th Panchen Lama and named
its own candidate as the second-highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism,
Woeser felt the same insult as her Tibetan friends. "China controlled
the monks so strictly," she explained. "When you live in Tibet and you
hear and see these things every day, you will change."
In 1999, Woeser published her first poetry collection, which explored
Tibetan identity and dealt with sensitive issues indirectly, using
lyricism and metaphor. Her next book, a compilation of prose essays,
was direct, and it did not take long for authorities to ban it. Woeser
was told to leave her job at a state-sup****ted literary journal,
unless she repented for her political mistakes. She lost her income,
her pension, her security.
"My writing became very obvious," she said. "My father always taught
me that I have to listen to the Communist Party when it talks, and
that when I write, I have to balance between what I feel and what the
party says. But I've found that that's impossible to do."
She moved to Beijing and, the following year, married dissident writer
Wang Lixiong, who sup****ted her through what she sees as the turning
point in her life. She would not admit political mistakes, but rather
would give voice to truths about Tibet. If she couldn't publish in
China, she would publish in Hong Kong or Taiwan. If China would not
listen, maybe the outside world would.
By the time Woeser left Lhasa, she was already well into another
sensitive topic -- an account of the atrocities of the Cultural
Revolution in Tibet, based on interviews with 70 participants. The
work, which became the topic of two books she published in Taiwan, was
actually inspired by photographs her father had taken of temples being
smashed and people targeted as class enemies being beaten and
humiliated in public struggle sessions. Little has been recorded about
the experiences of Tibetans during that time, and scholars are eager
to translate her books into English. One volume has already been
translated into French.
Woeser has applied many times for a pass****t, but has always been
denied the right to travel overseas. Until now, it has not really
mattered, she said. Her small apartment in Beijing is a warm place,
decorated in Tibetan style, and she feels comfortable there, spending
her days in front of her computer except when she travels to Tibetan
areas on re****ting trips.
But since March 14, she said, life in Beijing has become very hard.
"There are so many extreme nationalists who know so little about
Tibet, who are so shallow about a lot of things," she said. "I really
resent it."
When she's inspired, she writes a little poetry. But mostly she is
do***enting as best she can the situation inside Tibet. According to
her re****ting, at least 150 Tibetans were killed in the Lhasa riot,
not just the 22 mostly Han Chinese deaths the government has
acknowledged.
"Sometimes I'm scared, especially when I hear my friends have been
beaten up," she said. "But I feel I have a responsibility to do this.
Some things are really hard to know now, but if I know something, I
will write it."
[Researcher Liu Liu contributed to this re****t.]
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/05/AR2008050502218.html
--------------------------------
From 'Secrets of Tibet'
Tuesday, May 6, 2008; A10
An excerpt from "Secrets of Tibet," one of the few poems by Woeser
that have been translated into English:
Once in a while, the masked demon reveals its true face,
frightening even the ancient deities.
Yet, the challenges have emboldened the ordinary birth;
who turn prayers in the deep nights into cries under the sun,
who convert whines behind the high walls into songs spread wide.
They are arrested! Punishments increased! Life sentences!
Executions postponed! Shot dead!
I usually keep quiet because I barely know anything.
Having been born and raised under the bugles of the PLA,
I am a suitable inheritor of Communism.
Egg under the red flag, suddenly cracked and broken.
Nearing middle age, belated anger is about to blurt from my throat.
I cannot stop my tears for the suffering Tibetans younger than me.
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/05/AR2008050502221.html
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