Tibetan Women’s Association and Human Rights China Ask for Greater Transparency in Chinese Country Reports

-Ama Adhe Tapontsang from the film “Cry of the Snow Lion”-image ©Tom Peosay

“I am free now. There are no guards outside my door. There is enough to eat. Yet an exile can never forget the severed roots of beginnings, the precious fragments of which are always within the heart. . . As I pass through the hours of each day, I feel my memories remains with the memories of my family and friends whose bones have become part of a land now tread by strangers,” said Adhe in “The Voice that Remembers.”

“There was no choice but for me to make this journey,” Adhe continues in her book. “Somehow I have survived, a witness to the voices of my dying compatriots, my family and friends. Those I once knew are gone, and I have given them my solemn promise that somehow their lives will not be wiped out, forgotten, and confused within a web of history that has been rewritten by those who find it useful to destroy the memory of many I have known and loved. Fulfilling this promise is the only purpose remaining in my life.”

Ama Adhe lives today in Dharamsala, India.

Today the Central Executive Committee of the Tibetan Women’s Association is advocating strongly for greater transparency in the process of reporting to UN CEDAW. “In view of the grave situations faced by Tibetan women in Tibet, we urge the Chinese authorities to invite the Council’s Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women on an official fact-finding mission which will include an extensive program in Tibetan areas of present-day China.”

Based in Dharamsala, India, the Tibetan Women’s Association has 47 branches in countries including Nepal, the U.S., Japan and various countries in Europe, with 13,000+ members. Their objectives include raising global awareness of the situation in Tibet, empowering women in exile, addressing human rights abuses perpetrated against Tibetan women, preserving Tibetan culture and environment, and to “join hands with the women of the world to promote peace and justice for all.”

Founded by Chinese students and scholars in March 1989, Human Rights in China (HRIC) is an international, Chinese, non-governmental organization with a mission to promote international human rights and advance the institutional protection of these rights in the People’s Republic of China (China). HRIC’s board and staff include Chinese, North American, and European individuals devoted to fostering greater space for democratic reforms and social justice.

-Tibetan Refugee Women in Thubten Choling near Junbesi, Nepal-
photo image ©Arie van der Velden 2002

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Sources for this article include Wisdom Publications, Harvard Human Rights Journal, Feminist Bookstore News, Tibetan Women’s Association, UN CEDAW, Amnesty International, HRIC – Human Rights in China, Tibet Autonomous Region’s White Papers, Tibet Environmental Watch, the U.S. National Academy of Science, “The Voice that Remembers” by Adhe Tapontsang, The American University, UNESCAP – The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and The WWF – World Wildlife Federation.
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This article was co-authored by humanitarian journalist Drea Knufken and WNN director and international women’s advocate, Lys Anzia.
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