Conversation with Tenzin Tsangpa La
Hosted by Tenzing Dhamdul, FNVA

The Unsilenced: Voices of Young Tibetans podcast session saw FNVA engage with Tenzin Tsangpa, a Tibetan who on 21st May, 2023 while attending the Counter Strike: Global Offensive Finals at Paris proudly displayed the Tibetan National Flag. However this simple act of displaying one’s identity and nationality was not taken kindly by misinformed Chinese Mainlanders. As he was subsequently harassed, confronted and assaulted by them and eventually led to the Tibetan National Flag being stolen from him and which was later burned by them and shared on Weibo (Popular Chinese Social media App) by these unruly, radicalised and misinformed Chinese.

The podcast session with Tenzin Tsangpa engages upon this very incident as he shares with us all in detail what he really experienced during this whole unwarranted incident. With the displayal of the Tibetan National Flag even leading to the Live Stream of this popular gaming event being disrupted in Mainland China. Furthermore, we also engaged on his experience as a Tibetan who had grown up in India and is currently residing in France, with a sizeable number of Tibetans also living there nowadays.

Tenzin Tsangpa tells us “Not all Chinese are like that especially those who are settled in the west” making it clear to us how it is those very Chinese who have been misinformed and brainwashed through the systematic propaganda and censorship by the Communist Party of China (CCP). Further reiterating that the Chinese people living in the western world has more exposure and would not conduct themselves in such barbaric ways.

His concluded by stating that “I have accomplished my goal of spreading awareness about our cause, especially among the Chinese youths who are oblivious to it due to CCP propaganda and censorship”. With his message to us, especially to his own Tibetan sisters and brothers being “More Tibetans especially those like us, in our age group. I think they should take the initiative however small it may be as every step counts to solve the Tibet-China conflict”.

The post Unsilenced: Voices of Young Tibetans appeared first on fnvaworld.org.

• Dr. Gyal Lo la, is a Tibetan activist, educational sociologist, and a leading expert on China’s assimilation and education policies in Tibet.

Hosted by Kate Saunders, FNVA

This session with Dr. Gyal Lo la on Colonial Boarding School is divided into two parts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4PK2AxHqio 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7OFuTW2T2A 

Dr. Gyal Lo la was born in Tibet, he obtained his master’s degree from the Tibetan Language and Culture Department at Northwestern University for Nationalities in Lanzhou, China. Subsequently becoming an Assistant Professor in the same department, where he taught for the next decade and undertook extensive research on Tibetan education. He obtained his PhD at the University of Toronto, Canada, and returned home in 2015 but was refused his past employment due to political sensitives over his time abroad. However he eventually attained a professorship at Yunnan University in 2017. Yet, three years into his contract, his position was terminated amidst a worsening political climate in China. Dismissed on the grounds that he was a “foreign Tibetan with a western background,” which eventually pushed him to leave his home country in December 2020.  

The conversation with Dr. Gyal Lo la sees him engage about his life in occupied Tibet. He explains how he studied in Tibet and how he eventually was given faculty and professorship in universities in Tibet. Likewise, he tells us how he first came to notice about the creation of such Colonial Style Boarding schools which began in the late 1990’s and was accelerated when Xi Jinping became president of The People’s Republic of China. Furthermore, he states how in his own region in Tibet, it was on September 2016 that he witnessed Chinese Colonial Boarding Schools for Pre-School/Kindergarten Tibetan children, who had no choice but are forced to attend.

He is a key primary source of @tibetactioninstitute report “Separated from their Families – Hidden from the World: China’s Vast System of Colonial Boarding Schools inside Tibet” leading to various testimonies at several global institutions across the world. Dr. Gyal Lo la also testified in such spaces shedding light on this draconian system that is ‘Killing the Tibetan in the Child’ said by Lhadon Tethong during a testimony at @ChinaCommission . He also shares with us his engagement with different leaders of the world on this subject since being pushed to flee his own homeland of Tibet. His advice to India and the larger international community when it comes to dealing with the Communist Party led People’s Republic of China.

The post Roof of the World: Tibet in Context. Why is China setting up Colonial Boarding Schools in Occupied Tibet? appeared first on fnvaworld.org.