ICT's monthly lecture series in Washington, DC, brings Tibetan and Chinese speakers together to create dialogue and to discuss and analyze various Tibet issues. 

Upcoming Lecture:

There is currently no scheduled event. Please check back soon.

Past Events:

In the Shadow of the Buddha: Secret Journeys, Sacred Histories and Spiritual Discovery in Tibet (An illustrated lecture)

6:00PM, Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Please RSVP to rsvp@savetibet.org or 202-785-8591

Location:
International Campaign for Tibet
1825 Jefferson Place, NW
Washington, DC20036

Metro: Red line, Dupont Circle or Blue/Orange lines, Farragut West

Event is free and open to the public. Venue is not handicapped accessible.

About the program:

In an illustrated lecture, Matteo Pistono weaves together majestic images from the Himalayas, stories of his pilgrimages in Tibet, and his role in smuggling out evidence of the Chinese government's human rights abuses to the West. Pistono draws on his experience to explore the intersection between spirituality and politics. You will journey with Pistono across vast expanses of the Tibetan landscape while hearing testimonies to suffering by Tibetans who sought him out to share their stories. You will see and hear how spiritual aspirations and political realties collide tragically in present-day Tibet. Pistono will also discuss his recently released book, "In the Shadow of the Buddha: Secret Journeys, Sacred Histories, and Spiritual Discovery in Tibet."

About the speaker:

Matteo Pistono is a writer, photographer, political activist and practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism. He lived and traveled throughout the Himalayas for a decade, bringing to the West first-hand accounts and photos of China's human rights abuses in Tibet. He is the founder of Nekorpa, a foundation working to protect sacred pilgrimage sites around the world. For more information, please visit www.matteopistono.com.

Electing Leaders without a Territory: Challenges to Tibetan Democracy in Exile

6:30PM, Friday, January 7

This lecture will be webcast LIVE at www.savetibet.org.
Please visit the ICT home page for the webcast link starting 6:15PM EST on Friday, January 7.
Questions and comments can be emailed to comments@savetibet.org.

March 20, 2011, marks an important milestone for the Tibetan exile community, as they will elect the head of government, the Kalon Tripa (Prime Minister) and members of the Parliament.  As the Dalai Lama moves to retire from his role in the Dharamsala-based Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), popularly known as the Tibetan Government in Exile, attention focuses on the authority and affairs of these elected leaders.  The CTA provides many services of a government to people who reside in different countries, including in the United States. It has an executive branch, a legislature and a judiciary and functions under the guidelines of the "Charter of the Tibetans in Exile," that was passed by the Parliament in 1991.  Given the nature of its existence, and the fact that that its "constituents" are spread across several continents, the election process of the CTA has its unique challenges. 



In this session we will get a Tibetan and a Chinese perspective of the Tibetan democracy. Prof. Xia Ming and Mr. Nima R.T. Binara, will discuss aspects of Tibetan democracy and the upcoming elections through their personal connections. Prof. Xia Ming is a Chinese scholar who has visited Dharamsala several times and has written on Tibetan democracy in exile. Mr. Nima R.T. Binara, is co-editor of the popular website, The Tibetan Political Review <www.tibetanpoliticalreview.com>, that has been monitoring the ongoing Tibetan election process and providing analysis of the process as well as the campaign statements by the candidates.

6:30PM, Friday, January 7, 2011

Please RSVP to rsvp@savetibet.org or 202-785-1515                                                                                                                 

Location:
The International Campaign for Tibet
1825 Jefferson Place, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 202 785-1515
Metro system: Red line, Dupont Circle or Blue/Orange lines, Farragut West 
Event is free and open to the public. Venue is not handicapped accessible.

Speakers Bios:

Professor Xia Ming, is Professor of Political Science, at
the College of Staten
Island and the Graduate
Center, the City
University of New York. He is a columnist for BBC World Service Chinese Section
and China
in Perspective electronic magazine. He is also an associate editor for Modern
China Studies journal. He holds a bachelor's and a master's degree from Fudan University
and a Ph.D. degree from Temple
University, USA.
He once taught at Fudan University and served as a residential fellow at the Sigur Center
for Asian Studies at the George Washington University,
the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, and
the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore. He was the
recipient of the Bernard Watson Best Dissertation Award from Temple University
(1997) and the recipient of the Dolphin Award for Outstanding Scholarly
Achievement from the College
of Staten Island (2003).
He is the author of The Dual Developmental State: Development Strategy
and Institutional Arrangements for China's
Transition (Ashgate 2000) and Toward a Network Mode of Governance: The
Provincial People's Congresses in China (Routledge 2008). He is also
a co-producer of Oscar-nominated HBO documentary, "China's
Unnatural Disaster, The Tears of Sichuan Province" (2009). 

Nima R.T. Binara, is an
Attorney-Advisor at the U.S. Department of Justice.  He previously served
as Senior Counsel to Intelsat Corp. and Associate at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton
& Garrison LLP.  He received his J.D. from Columbia Law
School and his LL.M. in
Public International Law from the London School of Economics.  Prior to
law school he worked at the China Public Policy Program at the Kennedy School
of Government at Harvard
University.  He is a
member of the American Bar Association, the board of directors of Tibet Justice
Center, and the editorial
board of The Tibetan Political Review.  He is speaking in his personal
capacity.

Todd Stein, is the Director of Government Relations at ICT. Prior to joining ICT, he worked for many years on Capitol Hill, primarily as a foreign and military policy aide for a bipartisan caucus and members of the House and Senate.

 

TBD: Sign-up for ICT's updates if you would like to receive advance notice about upcoming lectures and events.

Past Events:

 

The Thirteenth Dalai Lama and Tibet (9/14/10)

Speaker: Professor Ngawang Thondup Narkyid

The Great Thirteenth Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso, a reformer and
skillful politician, assumed political and spiritual authority of Tibet
from 1895 until 1933. Professor Ngawang Thondup Narkyid, an independent
scholar and former official of the Tibetan Government of Lhasa, will
discuss the life and works of the Great Thirteenth Dalai Lama and his
efforts to define Tibet as a nation state in the modern era in the
early part of the 20th century. The talk will cover the 13th Dalai
Lama's exile to India from 1910 to 1913, the then relationship with the
Manchus and British India, the declaration of Tibet's independence and
in particular, the complexities of the 1914 Simla Convention between
Tibet, British India, and China.

 

KYEGUDO: In the aftermath of the earthquake in Yushu Tibetan Automous Prefecture (5/14/10)

Speaker: Guru Choegyi, Radio Free Asia, Rinchen Tashi, ICT 

The Yushu Tibetan Autonomous, (an area in the traditional Kham Region of eastern Tibet) suffered a devastating earthquake on April 14, 2010. Over 97 per cent of the population of the area, known to Tibetans as Kyegudo, is Tibetan. Thousands were killed, tens of thousands injured and the historical town of Kyegudo, as it used to, has been almost completely destroyed. 


There has been much media coverage on the relief efforts by the Chinese Government as well as by the Tibetan people, both in and out of Tibet. The Dalai Lama himself has expressed his readiness to visit the area and provide spiritual solace to the people. China's top leaders have visited the area and the earthquake has brought attention to the Tibetan people at a humane level.
As China starts revealing its plans for the reconstruction of the quake region, it is also important that it understands local Tibetan stakeholder's interests. Our discussion today, with panelists Rinchen Tashi and Guru Choegyi, both natives of Yushu, will focus on the history and significance of Kyegudo as a center of Tibetan culture; the social, economic, and political ramifications of the earthquake for the people of the region as well as for the Chinese Government authorities.

Surviving the Dragon: A Tibetan Lama's account of 40 Years under Chinese Rule (3/8/10)

Speaker: Arjia Rinpoche 

Surviving the Dragon is the remarkable story of Arjia Rinpoche. As a child, he was treated like a living Buddha; as a young man he emptied latrines. Yet after the death of Mao Tse Tung, he rose to prominence within the Chinese Buddhist bureaucracy, became Vice-chairman of the Buddhist Association of China, and was slated to become its Chairman.  At the time of his escape to the USA, his life was one of ease which would have continued if he had agreed to become tutor to the boy whom the Communist Chinese had unconscionably named the 11th Panchen Lama. It was a political move against the Dalai Lama and his Buddhist faith.
His conscience would not allow him to be disloyal to the values of his mentor the 10th Panchen Lama or His Holiness the Dalai Lama. As a result, he fled Tibet rather than betray his Buddhist religion and his
Tibetan and Mongolian heritage. Surviving the Dragon opens a window to events from inside Tibetan-Chinese history during the final half of the twentieth century.

 

Sky Train: Tibetan women on the edge of history (02/23/10)

Speaker: Author Canyon Sam discussed and signed her new book. 



Through a lyrical narrative of her journey to Tibet in 2007, activist Canyon Sam contemplates modern history from the perspective of Tibetan women in her groundbreaking book. Traveling on China's new "Sky Train," she celebrates Tibetan New Year with the Lhasa family whom she'd befriended decades earlier and concludes an oral-history project with women elders. As she uncovers stories of Tibetan women's courage, resourcefulness, and spiritual strength in the face of loss and hardship since the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950, and observes the changes wrought by the controversial new rail line in the futuristic "new Lhasa," Sam comes to embrace her own capacity for letting go, for faith, and for acceptance. Her glimpse
of Tibet's past through the lens of the women - a visionary educator, a freedom fighter, a gulag survivor, and a child bride - affords her a unique perspective on the state of Tibetan culture today - in Tibet, in exile, and in the widening Tibetan diaspora.

Slowly taking back the screen - Cinema in Tibet (01/22/10)

Speaker: Professor Robbie Barnett, Columbia University, New York

Film and cinema have been an important part of political and cultural life in Tibet since China took control of Tibet sixty years ago.  For decades, films in Tibet showed Tibetans as backward if exotic victims of a brutal society. But since the late 1980s, some Tibetan and Chinese writers and directors have worked hard to find more sophisticated ways to represent Tibetans on film, and recently they are succeeding. This talk looks at the history of cinema in Tibet and at the pioneering work of Phagmo Tashi, Pema Tseten, Sonam, Rigden Gyamtso, Chenaktshang Dorje Tsering, Zhang Yi and other directors in Tibet.

Buddhism as a bridge between China and Tibet? (10/30/2009)

Speakers: Professor Gray Tuttle, Columbia University, Professor Chun-Hung Chen, George Mason University Moderator: Pema Wangyal, ICT

In recent years, religion in general and Buddhism in particular has started playing a more significant role in Chinese society, both at governmental policy levels as well community levels. According to a survey by the East China Normal University it is estimated that 31.4% of Chinese people aged 16 or over were religious, putting the number of believers at roughly 300 million, three times higher than the official figure. China Daily, carrying a report on the survey, claimed about 200 million of these are either Buddhist or followers of other traditional religions in China. The current Chinese leadership is trying to find ways to use religious characteristics to help find solutions to social problems. President Hu Jintao has himself spoken out about religion and its role in China. According to Ye Xiaowen, head of China's State Administration for Religious Affairs, Buddhism with its "profound ideas of harmony and a conception of peace" could relieve the stresses and strains in people’s lives as well as between them and nature, thus enhancing social accord. Similarly, at the community level there is an increasing acceptance of religion in people’s lives. Buddhism is seeing a revival at all levels of Chinese society and many Chinese are increasingly turning to Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhist masters for spiritual guidance and succor.

The discussion at ICT was therefore about the potential for Tibetan Buddhism to be the common ground for Tibetan and Chinese communities to come closer to and understand each other better.

Grounds for Hope: Locality, Engagement, & Morality in Our Relationship to Tibet (9-18-2009)

Speaker: Professor David Germano, University of Virginia (UVa) in Charlottesville

The presentation addressed interlinked challenges facing those who live outside of Tibet, and yet who care passionately about its future: the possibility and significance of engagement inside Tibet; the tension between broad-based development goals for Tibetan communities and the unique forms of life, culture, and language that make Tibetan communities Tibetan; and the transformative potentials of global and local forms of knowledge for Tibetans. These challenges were addressed in a broad way, but also with a specific focus on what higher education could do, should do, and is doing in this context. David Germano, from the University of Virginia (UVa) in Charlottesville, drew upon his experience over two decades in Tibet to discuss these issues. He showed visuals of the innovative work at participatory knowledge creation and use of digital technology that UVa has been leading over the past decade, and offered a challenging framework for further discussion of the importance of locality, the possibility of engagement, and what is truly moral for individuals and organizations as we ponder our present activities and our hopes for a better future.

Implications of the Gongmeng Report on Tibet (6-25-2009)

A panel discussion on the recently released and unprecedented investigative report by Beijing based thinktank, Gongmeng (Open Constitution Initiative). Watch this discussion on YouTube.

A bold new report released in May, 2009, challenged the official Chinese position on the causes of the protests that broke out across Tibet in March 2008. The report which is based on field research conducted in the Tibet Autonomous Region and Labrang, Amdo (Gansu), also offers startling insights and analysis on the policies of the People's Republic of China in Tibet over the last 30 years. Until now, the report has appeared only online in Chinese and it is unlikely to be disseminated publicly in China. Read ICT’s translation and analysis of the document.

Speakers:

Chen Pokong
Editorial Consultant, Radio Free Asia, Washington DC

Steven D. Marshall
Senior Advisor and Prisoner Database Program Director,
Congressional Executive Commission on China, Washington DC

Tsewang Phuntso
Liaison Officer for Latin America, Office of Tibet, New York

Moderated by:
Ben Carrdus
Senior Researcher, International Campaign for Tibet

50 Years in the Tibetan Diaspora (5-14-2009)

2009 marks the 50th Anniversary for the Tibetan diaspora community. It has been 50 years since the Dalai Lama entered Indian territory as a young refugee along with about 80,000 Tibetans with barely the clothes on their backs. Since then, the Tibetan refugees have established a democratic Government-in-Exile, schools, monasteries and have succeeded in creating a strong and vibrant Tibetan diaspora community that stretches from India, to Nepal and over 40 other countries world wide.

As part of ICT's lecture series bringing Chinese and Tibetan speakers together, our panelists Ms. Jianglin Li and Mrs. Pema Dechen Gorap discussed and shared their experiences within the Tibetan diaspora community. Ms. Jianglin Li is a Chinese writer, born and raised in China, and is currently researching the history of the Tibetan diaspora community. Mrs. Pema Dechen Gorap is a Tibetan Journalist, born in Tibet, raised and educated in India, who has served in the Tibetan communities in India for over 20 years.

Speakers:

Ms. Jianglin Li
Senior Librarian, International Resource Center, Queens Library, New York

Mrs. Pema Dechen Gorap
Journalist, Voice of America, Washington DC

Laogai in Tibet and China (4-15-2009)

As part of ICT's lecture series that brings Chinese and Tibetan speakers together, Mr. Harry Wu and Mr. Tubten Khétsun recounted their experiences in Chinese Prison Camps in Tibet and China. Mr. Wu was imprisoned at the age of 23 for being a "Rightist" and subsequently spent 19 years behind the iron bars of the Laogai. Mr. Thubten Khetsun spent four years in prison and two decades performing forced labor for opposing the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Their moving first hand accounts of the Laogai system in Tibet and China, where millions have perished, and others still continue to perish, brought to light some of the horrors and atrocities committed by China's communist regime.

This lecture was part of the series of programs scheduled to co-incide with the special exhibition "Laogai in Tibet," produced by the collaboration of the International Campaign for Tibet and the Laogai Museum.

Speakers:

Tubten Khetsun: Born in 1941, Tubten Khétsun is a nephew of the Gyatso Tashi Khendrung, one of the senior government officials taken prisoner after the Tibetan peoples' uprising of March 10, 1959. Khétsun himself was arrested while defending the Dalai Lama's summer palace, and after four years in prisons and labor camps, he spent close to two decades in Lhasa as a requisitioned laborer and "class enemy." In his autobiography, Memories of Life Under Chinese Rule, Khétsun describes what life was like during those troubled years. His account is one of the most dispassionate, detailed, and readable firsthand descriptions yet published of Tibet under the Communist occupation. Khétsun talks of his prison experiences as well as the state of civil society following his release, and he offers keenly observed accounts of well-known events, such as the launch of the Cultural Revolution, as well as lesser-known aspects of everyday life in occupied Lhasa.

Harry Wu: In 1960, Harry Wu was sent to the Laogai on charges of being a "counter-revolutionary rightist." He spent the next 19 years in the Laogai. Wu came to the United States in 1985 as a visiting professor of Geology at the University of California at Berkeley and established the Laogai Research Foundation, a non-profit research and public education organization in 1992. In the summer of 1995, he was re-arrested by the Chinese government as he tried to enter China. He was sentenced to 15 years on charges of "stealing state secrets"  but he was immediately expelled as a result of an extensive international campaign launched on his behalf. Since his release, he has continued his work in publicizing the fight to condemn the Laogai and document its atrocities. He is the author of three books. Laogai: The Chinese Gulag, that addresses the systematic abuses of the Laogai. Bitter Winds, his memoirs of his time in the laogai camps and Troublemaker, which details his clandestine trips back into China to gather evidence on the Laogai and his detention by the Chinese government in the summer of 1995. He is the winner of the Hungarian Freedom Award, Swiss Martin Ennals Human Rights Award and the Dutch Medal of Freedom Award.

Laogai in Tibet Exhibition (March 27-May 30, 2009)

The Laogai Museum, in cooperation with the Laogai Research Foundation (LRF) and the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), hosted a special exhibition, Laogai in Tibet, from March 27th through May 30th, giving a pictorial overview of the past 50 years of human rights in Tibet under Chinese rule. The year 2009 marks the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising of 1959 and the exile of the Dalai Lama.

Art Exhibit Opening: Signs from Tibet: New Works by Losang Gyatso (12-11-2008)

Images of the uprisings that took place across Tibet in spring 2008 flickered across television screens, computer monitors, mobile phones, and newspapers' halftones across the world.

Gyatso’s depictions of the monks from Jokhang and Labrang, who risked their own security by staging dramatic and heart rending protests, screen printed on sheet aluminum, suggest ordinary public signs, but ones where the images pulsate into being and then recede into random dissonant patterns, reflecting both the nature of these two highly charged incidences and the state of conflict and uncertainty that pervades all Tibetan regions today.

Signs from Tibet website

Role of Tibet in China’s Emerging Environmental Movement: Translocal/Transnational Biodiversity Conservation Efforts (11-20-2008)

Environmental activism is on the rise in China and its existence is seen by many as a major step towards increasing dialogue and action on political, civil as well as environmental issues, and more importantly, as a movement to push toward greater democracy in the country. Our panelists, Emily Yeh and Dekila Chungyalpa, both of whom speak Tibetan fluently and have traveled extensively in Tibetan areas to work with local communities and grassroots organizations, spoke of the role that Tibet plays in the formation of the Chinese environmental movement. They  highlighted some Tibetan eco-entrepreneurs, works of local grassroots groups and some hopeful forms of Chinese-Tibetan cooperation in the use of Tibetan culture to protect the environment.

Speakers:

Emily T. Yeh is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research interests center around the political economy and cultural politics of development and environmental change in Tibetan areas of the PRC. Projects she has pursued include mushroom harvesting and conflicts over property rights in forests in Kham (Yunnan); grassland conflict resolution and state incorporation in Amdo (mostly Qinghai); and the cultural politics of identity and difference in the Tibetan diaspora. Her dissertation, entitled Taming the Tibetan Landscape: Transformations of Agricultural Land and Labor is an ethnographic and historical study of development and agriculture around Lhasa, with a focus on greenhouse vegetable farming in the period of economic reform.

Dekila Chungyalpa has led WWF's efforts in the Mekong region since 2005. Prior to this, she worked for WWF in the Eastern Himalayas and South Asia. Her extensive experience working with local communities and designing practical solutions at multiple scales enables Dekila to tackle the diverse threats facing the Mekong region: rapid hydropower and road development, climate change, agricultural expansion, and wildlife and timber trade. Dekila—who speaks Sikkimese, Tibetan, Hindi and Nepali—has helped establish programs that benefit both local communities and wildlife. "Our projects work best when we understand what lies in the heart of a community—its aspirations and its needs—and can marry this understanding with a conservation vision."  

Woeser: Voice of Tibet (10-14-2008)

Watch this panel discussion on YouTube.

Despite China’s tight control over information flow within its society, a growing number of Tibetan literary elites are playing an important role writing, blogging and interacting with the Chinese populace, voicing their minds through stories, poems, and blogs. The focus of the discussion was Tsering Woeser, who is at the forefront of this movement, speaking, blogging and constantly challenging Chinese authorities, fighting hackers, arrests and detention. She remains unemployed, her blogs shut down, and her movements restricted but yet she has become one of China’s greatest woman writers. Our panelists spoke of her life in context with this new movement of Tibetan literary elites and the struggles that they have to overcome everyday.

Speakers:

Susan Chen, Ph.D. Candidate, Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University

Tseten Wangchuk, Senior Research Fellow, Tibet Center at University of Virginia

Andrew E. Clark, Translator & Editor, Tibet’s True Heart

Moderated by:
Kate Saunders, Communications Director, International Campaign for Tibet

Intersection of Chinese Nationalism and Tibet (9-11-2008)

The Tibet uprisings in March and the worldwide Olympic Games torch relay protests led to a backlash of Chinese Nationalism as never before seen.

Our panelists, Suisheng Zhao, author of A Nation State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism, which speaks of the origins, contents and consequences of nationalism in China, and Tashi Rabgey, co-author of Sino-Tibetan Dialogue in the Post-Mao Era: Lessons and Prospects, discussed and analyzed Chinese nationalism and its implications on the issue of Tibet.

Speakers:

Suisheng Zhao, Professor & Executive Director, Center for China-U.S. Cooperation

Tashi Rabgey, Lecturer & Director of Contemporary Tibetan Studies at the University of Virginia

Understanding China’s “Patriotic Education” Campaign in Tibet (8-15-2008)

Beijing professes freedom of religion in Tibet, but it also implements a strict “patriotic education” campaign intended to tighten party control over religion and undermine the influence of the Dalai Lama in society and religious institutions. This campaign has been further ramped up since the March 2008 protests in Tibet.

In the fourth in our series of lectures on the Tibet issue, Arjia Rinpoche discussed and analyzed Beijing’s “patriotic education” campaign from a Chinese and Tibetan perspective.

Speaker:

Arjia Rinpoche, Director, Tibetan Cultural Center, Bloomington, IN

The Beijing Olympics: Opportunities and Obstacles (7-17-2008)

China went to great lengths to win the bid to become the host nation for the 2008 Olympic Games, with the intention of dazzling the world with its economic growth and modernization. But in the lead up to the games, we’ve seen the spotlight also shine on China’s human rights record and, in particular, its record on Tibet.

In the third lecture of our series that brings together Chinese and Tibetan perspectives, our panelists discussed the opportunities and obstacles for China and Tibet brought about by the Beijing Olympics.

Speakers:

Yu Maochun, Professor of East Asia and Military History, U.S. Naval Academy

Tseten Wangchuk, Senior Editor, Tibetan Language Service, Voice of America

China’s Media Coverage of the Protests in Tibet (6-19-2008)

Mainstream media coverage inside China played a significant role in shaping and influencing the reaction of the Chinese public to the recent Tibet protests. State control over the news media in China is well known and is achieved through a complex combination of strategies with far-reaching influence.

As part of our series of lectures/discussions on the Tibet issue, our panelists discussed and analyzed how media inside China covered the recent Tibet protests and its effects and consequences for Tibet.

Speakers:

Haipei Shue, Government Relations Specialist

Rinchen Tashi, Deputy Director for Chinese Outreach, ICT

Ben Carrdus, Senior Researcher/Communications Deputy, ICT

Implications of the Tibetan Uprising and China’s Response: Chinese and Tibetan Perspectives (5-29-2008)

Since March 10, 2008, the world witnessed a series of unprecedented demonstrations inside Tibet, leading to China’s biggest crackdown in over 40 years. With the world’s eyes on China leading up to the Olympic Games, ICT began hosting a series of talks and discussions on the Tibet issue. On May 29, our panelists assessed the causes, implications and the subsequent handling of recent events in Tibet.

Speakers:

Drew Liu, Executive Director of China Strategic Institute

Chen Kuide, Editor, Observe China

Pema Wangyal, Research Analyst, International Campaign for Tibet