At The Times of India, Shobhan Saxena profiles Tsering Woeser, the prominent Tibetan dissident writer:
Born in Tibet in 1966, Woeser is a poet, writer, blogger and chronicler of Tibetan life and history. Above all, she is a truth seeker. She brings out the facts that are blocked by the state media. She revives those memories that are forbidden in China. “Chinese authorities seem concerned that my views will contradict the rosy picture that they want to present via an approved itinerary and scripted encounters meant to project an image of happy Tibetans living happy lives, ” Woeser said, after she was placed under house arrest.
[…] Chasing her Chinese dream, Woeser came out of the Southwest University for Nationalities in Chengdu as an apolitical poet. “My way of thinking was not based on reality, ” she once said. But in 1999, as Woeser moved to Lhasa to work with a state-supported journal, she came face to face with the reality in Tibet, and her poetry began to turn political. She started documenting the Tibetan life under the Chinese rule. In 2003, she published a book ‘Notes on Tibet’, exposing the Chinese atrocities on Tibetan people. The book was banned for “political errors” and Woeser was asked to condemn her own writing. When she refused, she was fired from her job, her pension was frozen. [Source]
See more on Tsering Woeser and on the latest developments in Tibet via CDT. Many of Woeser’s writings are available in English translation at the trilingual High Peaks Pure Earth blog.
