With joy, sorrow and a few surprises, a Taiwan Friends of Tibet (TFOT) student delegation yesterday shared their experiences and discoveries from a two-week trip to Dharamsala, India, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Sitting in a room at a coffee shop near the MRT Zhongshan Station in Taipei, members of the student delegation and their friends shared pictures, video clips and new discoveries from their trip last month.
The room was sometimes filled with laughter, cheers and applause, and sometimes with a more serious atmosphere when discussions were focused on issues relating to the political situation in the exiled community.
“The most interesting finding was that, in the past, we’ve always viewed the Tibetans as a whole, we see the structural problems, and we know that they are being repressed by the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] regime,” said Hsiao Hui-chung (蕭惠中), an Academia Sinica research fellow who accompanied the delegation of mostly college and graduate students on the trip.
“However, when we were there and talked to individual Tibetans, we found that they are not a people as a collective, but rather individuals with different stories, backgrounds, ideas and expectations,” he said.
Hsiao said that for most people who are concerned about the Tibet issue, it is the voice of the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama that stands out most, “but once we were in Dharamsala, we heard different voices and there are also voices critical of the government-in-exile.”
Wu Ju-mei (吳如媚), a graduate student from National Taitung University’s Graduate Institute of Regional Policy and Development Research who has interviewed several Tibetan public figures in Dharamsala, said she was also surprised by the different views expressed by different people.
“Former political prisoner Lukar Jam is very critical of the exiled government and believes that all governments will eventually become interest-driven groups. He even went so far as to remind the exiled government not to become a new problem for Tibetans,” she said. “On the other hand, Gang Lhamo, a member of the exiled parliament and also a former political prisoner, believes a government could serve as a symbol of legitimacy and the struggle for the Tibetan cause may be harder without the exiled government.”
Wu said that while the Dalai Lama is a much-respected figure among Tibetans, “there are also Tibetans who think that the status the Dalai Lama enjoys is not positive for the development of democracy in the exiled Tibetan community.”
While Tibetans may hold different views about their government and on current events, the delegation found that independence for Tibet is a shared objective for all exiled Tibetans, despite the government-in-exile’s insistence on gaining genial autonomy under Chinese rule in recent years.
“The living conditions and the environment in Dharamsala are much harsher than I have expected, but no matter how challenging life is for the Tibetans, most of them are very positive-minded and optimistic,” Nanhua University student Peter Hu (胡家銘) said.
“I think this is a lesson we should learn from them when we face so many social injustices in Taiwan,” he added.
The TFOT organizes trips to Dharamsala every year, hoping to promote exchanges between Taiwanese and exiled Tibetans, as well as to help Taiwanese understand the Tibetan issue better.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying