The Chinese government has not eased its oppression in Tibet 40 years after the ravages of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese writer Wang Lixiong (王力雄) said recently at a book launch in Taipei.
Wang is renowned for his books Yellow Peril, one of the best selling books in the Chinese-speaking world but banned in China, and Sky Burial: The Fate of Tibet, which is about Tibetan culture.
"Forty years after [the Cultural Revolution], a shadow remains over Tibet. And the Chinese government hasn't restrained its control and oppression of Tibet, put ting a lot of limitations on Tibetans," said the writer, who was arrested and briefly detained in the early 1990s.
Wang's wife Woeser was affected by her husband's notoriety. Woeser, one of the few female Tibetan writers who writes in Chinese, lost her job as an editor after publishing a book in which she praised the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
The launch featured three books by Woeser. One of them, Forbidden Memory: Tibet During the Cultural Revolution, includes as many as 300 newly published pictures.
The photographs were taken by her father, a Chinese military officer in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution.
"Looking at those pictures brought back a lot of memories and made me pretty emotional," said Tsegyam, Representative of the Tibet Religious Foundation of His Holiness The Dalai Lama.
The foundation is the de facto office in Taiwan of the Government of Tibet in Exile, which is led by the Dalai Lama. Tsegyam experienced the Cultural Revolution as a boy and fled to India years later.
"Let's not forget what Chinese President Hu Jintao (
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