Tashi Lama
Moved by the gross human right violations around the world, I detoured amnesty international’s website to learn more. The prospect of free amnesty magazine as a member enticed me to sign up. I didn’t receive the magazine until several months I first signed up, however. As expected, the magazine was rich in visual and gallant in words. Believe me or not, I went through every letter in the magazine filled with anger and anxiety over the state’s/administration’s violation of basic human rights and occasionally pausing in respite over organization’s triumph in scooping off some justices from the abyss of injustice.
One of the things that I learned and would like to share with my fellow expatriates, very much in the west is the realization of us being able to participate in the cause close to our heart without sparing much time what we are already short of especially taking two jobs and yet struggling to save little money. I am not so surprised to see sparsely populated protestors or vigil holders even though our number now tops good five thousands in New York alone. That doesn’t mean that we don’t care about the land and glory our predecessors left behind. But we also have to be realistic and care about our social/personal obligation such as work, raise children and sort out some time for social recourses. Unfortunately, we often fall behind the time while trying to catch up our social/personal duties leaving a huge gap in favor of an entity as massive as the country which involves an interest of a group or communities or ethnicity. I am certain of the fact that, we, given enough time or someone come up with a clever idea totally compatible to our necessity , would remain assertive to our sub priority, in this case Tibet and Tibetans. The latter is where I want to strike. Writing letters and signing petitions or even calling the local representatives in our constituents don’t require enormous time but their impact on freeing good people from the evil dungeons of Chinese cells, stopping China transporting mines and minerals back to Beijing to buy riches for elites or to add another apartment in Shanghai could be huge.
In the fall 2006 issue of Amnesty International U.S. magazine, the newly sworn executive director writes “While AI supporters include many celebrities and other public figures who have helped draw attention to the plight of political prisoners, the so called ordinary folks who had other jobs and who in their spare time would write these letters and make phone calls that give Amnesty its strength”. Wait a second, ordinary folks, yes ordinary folks like me, you can help AI provide justice to those who have been denied and punish perpetrators, often the states who have signed almost every U.N. resolution protecting the basic rights of civilians.
I have to admit I have been mailed hundreds if not thousands of petitions to sign and send to respective governments/states and had numerous opportunities to sign letters and yes petitions in schools and communities. Regrettably, I have ignored almost all of them except few times when I either signed involuntarily not to make person/group asking feel bad or impress someone in a gesture to make them understand that I do understand the situation without any real sense of protest. To add to my chagrin, I haven’t called my representative one single time wooing him/her to stamp in some measures beneficial to people in my community, state and in broad perspective the entire human species as a responsible private citizen of a certain constituents.
Writing letters, signing petitions are civilized means of expressing concern, dissenting and lobbying for better treatment. Hundreds of lives have been saved from execution by the states, equal number of political prisoners have been released, many sentences have been relegated because common people like us showered the respective govts./states with mails, letters, petitions, in some cases calls to local representatives to raise the issue in the house and press the complicit party to respect public opinion and respect human rights.
One exemplary case is Tenzin Delek, a community leader who was charged with a connection in bombing and was convicted in a closed-door trial, a blueprint of Chinese legal system. He was sentenced to execution initially but was later relegated to life imprisonment in response to the massive free Tenzin Delek campaign put up by Tibet support groups. Yes, hundreds and thousands of letters and petitions were sent to the U.N. to step up and press Chinese govt. and to China itself to respect the law. I am glad that I somehow tripped over to sign that inferno.
Today, political stakes in Sino-Tibet dispute are listless. China has done irreparable damages in the past and is continuing to damage Tibet in every aspect of economic prospect, culture, tradition and of course people. There are letters and petitions with each of these grievances. I haven’t sign every one of them, but I have seen them displayed on different occasions, primarily on the table of Students for a Free Tibet, who have been on the frontier of such intellectual campaigns. And, next time I see them, I wouldn’t think twice to sign that makes sense to me because I know that, I am not signing a cheque that would come back to me as INSUFFIECIENT FUNDS but might save someone from illegal execution, persecution, incarceration and protect resources at home from being exploited by foreign infiltrators. Would you not?
