It isn’t always easy to pinpoint the successes of a campaign like ours; Tibetan independence will not happen overnight and the Chinese state’s grip on Tibet will only ebb away gradually. SFT works on long term goals and strategies; we grow pressure on the Chinese regime, we build awareness inside and outside Tibet and we train the next generation of Tibetan leaders.
SFT works to make it costly for China to hold on to Tibet. The vast mineral resources and strategic importance of Tibet are hugely important to China, but China spends more on internal security that external, and its close monitoring of Tibetans’ daily lives is costly.
It’s a costly failure; despite this investment, we can see from the ways the younger generation of Tibetans are speaking up against Chinese rule, that this investment is not paying off. How long before the CCP realises what we know; that Tibet will be free?
But there are standout moments in the campaign which remind the world that what we’re working towards is not only achievable, but inevitable. No oppressive regime in history has lasted and the Chinese Communist Party is no different. No economic boom in history has lasted forever, and China’s will turn to bust, removing the CCP’s financial sway. And no amount of oppression, imprisonment, torture, cultural repression or discrimination has silenced the Tibetan people’s demand for freedom.
Here are just a few examples of SFT’s victories
They are the result of the efforts of thousands of dedicated people around the world. Thank you to everyone who organised, wrote letters, took non-violent direct action, donated money, or otherwise helped bring about these victories.
SFT Declares Olympics Victory in Beijing:
SFT rose to international prominence in 2008 when our non-violent direct actions in Beijing during the Olympics catapluted the Tibetan cause onto the front pages of newspapers and the top stories of TV reports. The actions ensured that China failed in its bid to use the Olympics as a propaganda tool to declare itself a ‘developed’ country when it comes to human rights. Instead, everybody was talking about the oppression in Tibet and China’s horrendous human rights record.
Video of SFT’s Beijing Olympics actions
From the moment the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded China the Olympics in 2001, SFT, working together with Tibetan exile communities and Tibet Support Groups, organised mass protests and direct actions in Athens, London, Paris, San Francisco and Nagano – including a daring banner hang action on the Golden Gate Bridge, a breathtaking front page image seen across the world. SFT helped to ensure that China’s Olympic Torch Relay was blighted with protests. The relay was intended to show the ‘harmonious’ Chinese state and introduce China as a progressive nation deserving of the right to represent the Olympic ideals of fair play, equality and healthy competition. SFT UK helped organise protests on the London leg of the relay, which became the largest Tibet rally in history. We stood alongside others who are opressed by the Chinese regime; the Burmese, Uyghurs, Mongolians, Falun Gong, Zimbabweans, Sudanese and Chinese democracy activists. Together we drowned out Beijing’s propaganda parade and all that was reported along the route were protests. China’s abysmal human rights record was all people were reading about.
Banner drop in London and relay crowds
Then in Paris, the Olympic torch was extinguished twice and the relay abandoned. By the time the torch got to San Francisco, the Chinese state-organised relay was on its knees. The organisers ran the torch into empty warehouses rather than along the streets, cancelled street parties, left hundreds of fans with nothing to see, bundled the torch onto a bus and escaped by plane. All the while, CNN attempted to track the torch live with helicopters and China’s propaganda became a laughing stock- ‘search for the torch’ underlined that China was running scared. After that the torch relays in South America were marred with protests, in India extra security was drafted in so that the torch was run under military guard and in one relay it was even run around an empty stadium to avoid protest. More importantly than that, the Chinese state had planned to organise a three day relay through Tibet, along the same streets where Chinese forces had killed innocent Tibetans just months before, saying that if anybody protested they would be ‘dealt with serverely’. As it was, the Tibetan leg of the relay was cut to just a few hours with a curfew imposed to prevent protest. China’s torch relay propaganda had failed.
SFT UK board members Pete and Iain carried out these dramatic Olympic banner drops at the Great Wall and Olympic stadium
In the final months leading up to the Games, the Chinese government, determined to carry out an ‘incident-free’ Games, launched the largest security operation in Olympic history. In spite of this, 70 SFT members successfully staged 8 high-profile non-violent protests in Beijing; 55 were detained and deported, 10 of whom were jailed for up to 6 days.
Overall, SFT activists carried out 25 major nonviolent direct actions in seven countries, held dozens of training sessions on three continents, targeted Coca-Cola and other torch relay sponsors with grassroots campaigns, organized high-profile press conferences in five major cities and launched a groundbreaking online video channel: www.FT08.tv.
Through these inspiring nonviolent direct actions and the mobilization of thousands of supporters, SFT was able to keep Tibet in the global spotlight and show China’s current and future leaders that the Tibet issue must be resolved before China can ever be truly accepted as a global leader.
For highlights of SFT’s 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, visit www.freetibet2008.org for action footage, photos, press coverage, and more!
Other successes
Drapchi 14 Are Free!
On February 26, 2004, Phuntsog Nyidron, the last of the Drapchi 14 nuns still in prison, was freed. Her release came one year before the end of her 16-year prison term. Phuntsog Nyidron’s release marks a major victory: the completion of the campaign to free the Drapchi 14, a group of 14 nuns who received sentence extensions while in prison for recording a tape of freedom songs and smuggling it out of prison. When SFT prioritized this campaign two years before Nyidron’s release, one nun, Ngawang Lochoe, had died in prison in 2001 and eleven others were still imprisoned. Now all of those nuns are out, including Ngawang Sangdrol and Phuntsog Nyidron, who were serving the longest sentences ever handed down to female Tibetan prisoners. This is a milestone in the movement for Tibet, as it is the first time ever that an entire group of political prisoners has been freed. [press release] [news article]
Freedom Fighter Nun Ngawang Sangdrol Freed
Ngawang Sangdrol, one of the Drapchi 14 nuns, was first arrested at age 13 for a pro-independence demonstration. Arrested again at age 15, her sentence was extended repeatedly for continued protest in prison, which included recording a tape of freedom songs with the other Drapchi 14 nuns that was smuggled throughout Tibet. After intense pressure from people and governments around the world, she was released in October, 2002, 9 years before the end of her 21-year sentence. In April, 2003 she was released to the United States for medical treatment. She is now living in Washington, DC. [press release] [more]
Music to Our Ears: Ngawang Choephel Released
Freeing Ngawang Choephel was one of SFT’s first campaigns. For six years, students campaigned for a fellow student to be released from prison, and in January 2002, he finally was. Ngawang Choephel was studying ethnomusicology on a Fulbright scholarship at Middlebury College in Vermont when he decided to go to Tibet to document traditional Tibetan song and dance. He was arrested by the Chinese government in September 1995 and later charged with espionage and counter-revolutionary activities. In December 1996 Ngawang was sentenced to 18 years in prison. On January 20, 2002, Nwagang Choephel was released and flown to the United States, twelve years before the end of his sentence. [press release] [message from Ngawang]
Under Pressure from SFT, PBR Pulls Down Billboard in Tibet
October 2001 – After intense pressure from SFT members, Pabst Blue Ribbon, the fourth largest brewing company in the United States, pulled down a billboard in Lhasa, Tibet that celebrated the “50th Anniversary of the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet.” Pabst Brewing Company asked their Chinese licensee to remove the billboard after receiving over 1,500 faxes about the billboard over the course of less than a week. [more]
Unprecedented: SFT & Tibet Movement Stop World Bank Project
In July 2000, a proposed World Bank loan that would have funded the move of 58,000 Chinese settlers into Tibet’s Amdo Province collapsed, after fifteen months of intense campaigning by a broad international coalition of human rights organizations, Tibet support groups, environmental organizations and Bank-watching groups to stop the controversial project. The project would have facilitated China’s continuing population transfer efforts, which have already made Tibetans a minority in much of their own nation and facilitates erosion of Tibetan’s distinct culture and identity. [press release] [press release - 1999] [more about the World Bank]
SFT & Rights Groups Sabotage State-owned PetroChina IPO
In 2000, SFT worked with labor, human rights, and environmental groups to successfully persuade many of America’s largest investors to spurn the initial public offering (IPO) of PetroChina, one of the recently privatized subsidiaries of China’s state-owned oil industry, and the company responsible for building a gas pipeline through Tibet. Citing human rights and environmental concerns, the coalition forced PetroChina to reduce its IPO target from $10 billion dollars down to a final figure of $2.8 billion, effectively taking more than $7 billion out of the hands of the Chinese government. [press release] [news article]
BP Divests from PetroChina, Gets Out of Tibet
In 2000, BP became the target of an intense international campaign by Tibetans and Tibetsupporters after it invested $578 million in PetroChina, the company responsible for building a pipeline across Tibet to carry gas out of Tibet to industrial cities on China’s east coast. BP’s investment made it the largest foreign investor in PetroChina and provided the amount of capital needed to build the pipeline. Since 1999, the Chinese government has agressively sought foreign investment for its massive resource extraction and infrastructure projects in Tibet; projects that are aimed at consolidating China’s political control. The BP divestment campaign has not been a major campaign for SFT in recent months, but we nonetheless welcome BP’s decision to withdraw its support for PetroChina is a significant victory. [press release]
We bare these things in mind in all of our work. Over 60 years of occupation yet we’re still here, the Tibetan cultural and national identity is still here and the demand for freedom from Chinese rule is still here. The CCP on the other hand, like the Soviet Union, Apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany and other oppressive regimes, won’t last forever.
SFT UK is run by volunteers who use our own resources. You can help us grow by becoming an SFT UK Guardian for a political prisoner of your choice and help us campaign not just now but all year, every year until Tibet is free.
