My good friend Xeni at the hugely popular blog BoingBoing.net posted a story about the protest in Lhasa.  You can read the post here.

“Today we see how the real situation is in Tibet. The day seems to be silent and peacefull, even boring. Until 6 o´clock. then 100s of Tibetans gather together on the Bakhor Square.” -excerpt from the travel blog of two eyewitnesses of the March 10th Lhasa Protests.  To read the eyewitness account by the bloggers click HERE.

Here is a video clip of two young Tibetans in Toronto climbing the Chinese Embassy and replacing the Chinese flag with our beautiful Tibetan flag. This filled me with hope and pride and I couldn’t stop crying with joy when I watched it.

Tashi Delek Freedom Fighters!

I am sure you all had an amazing March 10th filled with hope, excitement and renewed energy.  I commemorated March 10th here in New York City, with my friends at Students for a Free Tibet.  It was so great seeing young Tibetans and supporters marching all over the city. From the New York Supreme Court to the United Nations to Union Square, we sure did alot of marching!   Here are some pictures of this truly inspirational protest.

This is my friend TC holding my sign for me.  My little arms were getting tired, so he gladly offered to hold it for me.

Here I am resting in one of my friends backpack for a moment.

Here are some of my friends wearing the “Yingsel Battle Mask” in front of the Chinese Consulate.

Here I am with the “Rangzen Fist Brigade”

Here are some more young Tibetan freedom fighters wearing the “Yingsel Battle Mask”

wow. these “Yingsel Battle Masks” sure are intimidating!

On the way to Union Square for the last part of the protest.

All in all it was an truly powerful day.  Please make sure to keep an eye on my blog for more updates about all of the actions occurring all over the world.

Peace and Freedom!

Yingsel the Rangzen Antelope

Hi Friends!  Here is the continuation of my previous post.  These pictures were taken on Dec 31 2007 - Jan 1 2008 right on the parade route in Pasadena, California.

the monster in hiding.

one of the SFT’ers sending an update to the SFT Office in New York City.

pre-dawn preparations for the protest.

Brave Tibetans unfurling a banner in front of China’s float of shame.

Making our presence known.

Tseten-la, one of the dynamic organizers from the Tibetan community.

to be continued..

On January 1st 2008 I went along with a handful of my SFT friends to camp out on the cold streets of Pasadena, California to protest the Beijing 2008 Float that featured my stolen image and also sadly had Tibetans from Tibet dressed up in sensationalized Tibetan costumes.  We were there protesting with other organizations ranging from the Falun Gong to Chinese Democracy activists to Darfur organizers.  Here is a photo journal of our trip.

two hardcore SFT’ers being interviewed in front of China’s Olympic Float the night before the Rose Bowl Parade.

Due to security concerns they had to hide the float the night before the parade.  this is the first time EVER in the parades history where they had to do this.

This is how Freedom Fighters ring in the New Year.  Freezing, on the streets and ready to protest!

here is one of my SFT friends doing some pre-parade awareness.

Here are more pictures of SFT’ers doing a pre-parade march at 2 in the morning.

These are pictures of true dedication.

That is Acha Nono-la resting in her sleeping bag. On the street, freezing.

Hey friends! I have to run out of this internet cafe I am in, I just got a call from a friend in Tibet, this post will be continued….

Peace and Freedom,

Yingsel

With the Olympics just around the corner and China trying to parade around an image of serene happiness on the Tibetan plateau, this article speaks volumes about their on-going propaganda campaign.  This is taken from the Wall Street Journal Online edition.

China Eats Crow
Over Faked Photo
Of Rare Antelope

They Didn’t Truly Run
With a Train to Tibet;
Xinhua Agency Recants

By JANE SPENCER and JULIET YE
February 22, 2008; Page A1

HONG KONG — It turns out that train tracks in Tibet aren’t where the antelope play.

Earlier this week, Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, issued an unusual public apology for publishing a doctored photograph of Tibetan wildlife frolicking near a high-speed train.

The deception — uncovered by Chinese Internet users who sniffed out a Photoshop scam in the award-winning picture — has brought on a big debate about media ethics, China’s troubled relationship with Tibet, and how pregnant antelope react to noise.

The antelope imbroglio began in the summer of 2006. The Chinese government was celebrating its latest engineering feat, and an enthusiastic wildlife photographer from the Daqing Evening News was camped out on the Tibetan plateau eating energy bars and waiting for antelope to pass.

¹

On July 1, 2006, in an event scheduled to coincide with the Communist Party’s 85th birthday, Chinese President Hu Jintao hosted the launch of China’s train to the “roof of the world.” The $4 billion Qinghai-Xizang railway — a remarkable system that transports passengers to an altitude (16,000 feet) so high that ballpoint pens can explode en route from the air-pressure change — traverses 1,200 miles of rugged terrain to connect the rest of China to the remote Tibetan plateau.

The train, which soon brought many visitors to the pristine homeland of Tibetan Buddhists, became a flash point for China’s long simmering tensions with Tibet. During construction, it drew fierce protests from environmentalists who said it would threaten the breeding grounds of the chiru, an endangered antelope species found mainly in China.

When the train service began, a remarkable photograph appeared in hundreds of newspapers, and it eased environmental concerns. The picture, captioned “Qinghai-Tibet railway opens green passage for wildlife,” featured dozens of antelope galloping peacefully across the Tibetan landscape, unfazed as the gleaming silver train raced beside them.

The photo was the work of Liu Weiqing, a 41-year-old photographer who had been camped with his Jeep on the Tibetan plateau since March, as part of a highly publicized series by the Daqing Evening News, a regional newspaper, to raise awareness of the rare Tibetan antelope. Mr. Liu was also under contract with Xinhua to provide photos for China’s largest government-run news service.

“One man, one car, one year…and a campaign to protect Tibetan antelope,” he wrote on his blog describing the project.

Once nearly wiped out by poachers who made shawls from its wool, the chiru’s numbers have increased in recent years, and the knobby-kneed bovid has emerged as a symbol of China’s environmental-protection efforts. Yingying the Tibetan Antelope is one of the five official mascots of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Some antelope lovers knew from the start that something was wrong with Mr. Liu’s photo. “I was really shocked when I first saw the photo,” says Yang Xin, of the antelope protection group Green River. For starters, he says, many of the antelope in the picture appeared to be pregnant and there were no young with the herd. That was a tip-off because many antelope would have given birth before late June when the photo was supposedly taken.

In late 2006, Mr. Liu’s picture was declared a top 10 “photo of the year” by CCTV, China’s state-run television network. Mr. Liu appeared in fatigues on national TV and described waiting in a pit for eight days for the antelope to pass at precisely the same moment as the train.

“I wanted to capture the harmony among the Tibetan antelope, the train, men and nature,” he told the audience, standing on stage in front of a big projection of the photo.

Media critics say the photo’s deeper message was hard to miss. “It’s such a perfect propaganda photo,” says David Bandurski a researcher at the University of Hong Kong China Media Project. “They don’t tend to give journalism prizes to reports that rock the boat.”

Other photographs that took home awards that night included “Facing a harmonious future,” a picture of Chinese President Hu posing with world leaders, and a “A trip to apologize,” a picture of a Japanese monk apologizing to China for Japanese atrocities in World War II. CCTV didn’t reply to inquiries about its criteria for photo awards.

Suspicions about the photo became public last week after Mr. Liu’s photograph was displayed in Beijing’s subway system. An anonymous Chinese Internet user going by the screen name Dajiala raised questions about the photo’s authenticity on one of China’s largest photography Web sites. Dajiala, a photographer who claimed to idolize Mr. Liu, said he was studying a copy of the photo posted on Beijing’s Line 5 subway platform when he rubbed some dust off it and noticed something odd.

“At the bottom of the photograph, there was a very obvious line,” he wrote. “I examined it very carefully and it was obviously the stitching of two different images….Was this decisive moment just a simple Photoshop trick?”

His post created an online storm. Photographers blew up the image and analyzed each out-of-place pixel. Animal behaviorists weighed in, explaining that antelope are shy and noise-sensitive, and would scatter in panic at the sound of the high-speed train. When the chat-room controversy spread to China’s largest Internet portals, the Chengdu Business Daily confronted Mr. Liu.

Cornered by the mounting evidence, Mr. Liu admitted he had indeed used Photoshop to blend two pictures, according to the newspaper.

Mr. Liu resigned from the Daqing Evening News and posted a statement on his blog. “I have no reason to continue my sacred career as a newsman,” he wrote. “I am not qualified for the job.” His editor then resigned, too, and the newspaper posted an apology on its Web site. The newspaper didn’t respond to repeated calls to its office. Mr. Liu didn’t answer calls to his cellphone.

Some of China’s Internet users expressed outrage that a photo easy to spot as fake had been widely circulated by major organizations. “We need an apology! This is very important for journalistic photography in China,” wrote one Internet user on a photography site.

It isn’t clear what was behind Mr. Liu’s deception. Some suspected he was the victim of his own ambition, and doctored the photo knowing that its patriotic message would appeal to China’s news agencies. “Liu knows how to please his master,” wrote one anonymous poster on the Internet.

His friends say he was dedicated to his job and determined to raise the profile of the embattled antelope. “He was a good guy,” says Zhou Zhuogang, an environmental activist from Shenzhen in southern China who met Mr. Liu in the summer of 2006 when the two men were at a volunteer station on the Tibetan plateau. “He loved photography, and he loved the antelope. I don’t know what pushed him to do this.”

Some suspect pressure to create the photo came from above. “When everybody points a finger to the photographer, we actually missed the real core problem here,” says Wang Yangbo, editor of Wen Wei Pao, a Hong Kong Daily. The photographers “are nobodies in the scheme of things here,” she adds.

Earlier this week, CCTV posted a statement on its Web site saying it was revoking Mr. Liu’s award. On Monday, Xinhua, China’s largest news organization, and several other government news organizations published an apology for circulating the photo. The companies said they would delete all of Mr. Liu’s images from their databases.

“We call on the public to work together with us to uphold the authenticity principle of news reporting,” the statement said. Xinhua didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Write to Jane Spencer at jane.spencer@wsj.com² and Juliet Ye at juliet.ye@wsj.com³

Hello Friends!

I just came back from San Francisco with all of my friends from SFT. I attended the Bay Area Olympics Conference as well as the Team Tibet Fashion Show. It was amazing! I have never seen anything so fun and well organized. Everyone was having fun and had smiles on their faces. From the Ama-la’s and Pa-la’s to the young kids. Thank you to all of the great organizers in the California Bay Area for putting on this great event! Here are clips of it. Enjoy!!!

Love and Freedom

Yingsel the Rangzen Antelope

Activists aim to protect antelopes from shawl trade

 

They hope to stop the animals’ slaughter by persuading weavers to use wool combed from non-endangered goats.

By Shankhadeep Choudhury, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 26, 2007

NEW DELHI — “Help me, please,” pleads the chiru on the poster that adorns several up-market boutiques across this capital city and beyond.

The chiru, or Tibetan antelope, indeed requires help, and the poster goes on to explain why. “Five chiru are slaughtered to make one shahtoosh shawl,” making the wild animal a highly endangered species. “Say no to shahtoosh.”

Alarmed conservationists in India have launched a massive campaign to encourage weavers of shahtoosh to organize themselves to promote an alternative fashion brand: the pashma, a handcrafted, traditional Kashmiri pashmina made from the wool of non-endangered, domesticated Himalayan goats.

“Many traditional craftsmen still feel that weaving shahtoosh is their birthright,” wildlife activist Aniruddha Mookerjee said. “No government would be able to enforce a total ban unless you provide alternatives.”

Mookerjee, a senior director with the New Delhi-based Wildlife Trust of India, believes that the pashma shawl, if promoted well, would enable traditional weavers in India’s northern Jammu and Kashmir state to benefit economically by producing a legal, high-quality hand-woven pashmina that could become internationally recognized.

“Pashma will provide consumers with a true alternative that safeguards the livelihoods of traditional shahtoosh weavers and the future of the chiru,” Mookerjee said.

Jammu and Kashmir, in the Himalayas, borders Tibet, where an estimated 100,000 chiru are fighting a losing battle for survival. In the upper reaches of the Tibetan plateau, these animals face intensive poaching for their under-fleece, which yields the finest of wool used for making shahtoosh shawls.

Jammu and Kashmir’s chief wildlife warden, A.K. Srivastava, said that 7,000 to 8,000 chiru were killed in Tibet every year.

“At this rate, the animal would be extinct in another eight years,” he warned.

Mookerjee puts the chiru poaching toll even higher, at as many as 20,000 animals a year. The figures may not be so surprising considering that five Tibetan antelope must be killed to make one white shawl, for which a customer shells out more than $2,500. The darker-colored variety comes cheaper, at about half that price.

Conservationists blame the dire predicament of the chiru on the popularity of shahtoosh among wealthy consumers in Asia, the U.S. and Europe from the 1990s onward. Seizures of shahtoosh shawls, each weighing less than 6 ounces and hyped for their warmth and snob value, have been made in the fashion capitals of London, Rome and New Delhi, as well as in China, Japan, France, Dubai and Switzerland.

The shawls are so valued that counterfeiting is common.

“Very often, the shahtoosh sellers do not even give genuine shahtoosh to their customers,” Mookerjee said. “It is mixed with pashmina or other materials.”

Even though the Indian government outlawed trade in shahtoosh in 1977, residents of Jammu and Kashmir could still legally work with derivatives from the animal until very recently, as long as they had licenses. In 2002, the state finally followed the central government’s example and upgraded the Tibetan antelope to its most restrictive classification of protected species, toughening punishment for violations and turning hunting of the chiru or use of its derivatives into a non-bailable offense.

The fact that antelope were slain to make shahtoosh shawls was not well known among Indian conservationists until the early 1990s, when an American wildlife scientist sounded the alarm and made a point of contacting international conservation officials.

But shahtoosh traders and weavers remained unconvinced, “clinging to the age-old myth that shahtoosh wool is shed by an animal and collected from rocks and bushes by their people,” said Ashfaque Matoo, an activist with the Wildlife Trust of India in Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir. “At times, it was even claimed that it was from the shed breast feathers of a bird.”

A survey by the Wildlife Trust of India and the U.S.-based International Fund for Animal Welfare found that some 15,000 weavers, three-quarters of them women, were involved in shahtoosh production in 2001 to 2002. After the state ban in 2002, about 55% of the weavers reported a complete shift from shahtoosh to pashma.

The pashma is made from the under-fleece of domesticated Changra mountain goats, which are reared at heights of more than 15,000 feet in the scenic Ladakh area of Jammu and Kashmir. The fleece is harvested by combing, and the animal is not harmed.

Although fine pashminas, a word that comes from the Persian term for soft wool-like hair, are also produced in China, Mongolia and parts of central Asia, Kashmiri master weavers believe that the finest wool comes only from Ladakh.

“The yarn combed from this goat has a very soft feel and fineness that makes it comparable to shahtoosh. Such fine pashmina only retains its intrinsic softness when it is cleaned and spun by hand, two traditional skills that are slowly being killed by machines,” said Gulam Hassan Hafiz, a 55-year-old weaver from Srinagar.

Weavers such as Hafiz, who quit shahtoosh shawl production after the ban, have joined other pashmina workers to form the Kashmir Handmade Pashmina Promotion Trust. Set up with help from the British government and the Wildlife Trust of India, the organization researches and tries to revive traditional patterns and weaves to promote them in niche markets.

Aimed at high-end department stores such as Harrods in London, the marketing pitch for hand-woven pashmas centers on their value as eco-friendly and socially responsible products. The shawls sell for $250 to $500.

“Pashma is all about trust. . . . We will guarantee the product,” Hafiz said.

“With this assurance and guarantee, we are going to the market.”

Tashi Delek Friends!!!

I’m so sorry its been a while since I have written on here, life outside of the careful eyes of the Chinese government has been so freeing and full of activity and excitement. I have been going all around the free world with Lhadon-la and the rest of my friends at SFT Headquarters speaking to Tibetan communities. It has been amazing meeting Tibetans in cities like San Francisco, Madison, Geneva, New York and Dharamsala. It has been so fun meeting all the young freedom fighters whom may have never seen Tibet, but still have all the “semshook” of their Ama-la’s and Pa-la’s generation.

During the month of October I went to India to visit our SFT’ers in Dharamsala, and had an amazing time! We had a Free Tibet! Action Camp in the valley near Dhasa, it was such a beautiful place. There were so many amazing young Tibetan activists, it filled my heart with a renewed sense of hope and happiness for the future. Walking around the streets of Dhasa reminded me of areas in Kham, where the Chinese haven’t yet changed into a mini Beijing. There were monks and nuns on their way to the Temple, there were Ama-las and Pa-las silently mouthing mantras while walking, there were younger children freshly out of school buying handfuls of steaming hot momos :), and then there was SFT India. These were some of the most hardworking, dedicated and passionate people I have ever met. Even before we arrived in Dhasa they were already hard at work setting up the camp, and throughout the camp were diligently working to make sure everything went smoothly. Their days would start at 5:30 am and end around 11pm, sometimes later. This camp was clearly successful because of their hard work prior and during the camp. If our movement is made up of Tibetans and supporters like those whom I met in Dhasa, then there is not doubt in my mind that Tibet will certainly be free. Its only a matter of time.

I thought that I should share some pictures and a video of my trip to Dhasa. I hope you enjoy!!!

This is me in the main square doing Kora.

Here I am lighting butter lamps.

This is me with Mel and Kate, walking up Temple Road.

This is me, speaking with Tendor-la at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts.

Here I am with SFT’ers at our hangout, Jimmy’s Italian Kitchen.

Here I am speaking with Tendor-la and Lhadon-la at the Tibetan Children’s Village.

Here I am with Tendor-la and a new friend I met at TCV.