Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser receives "2010 Courage in Journalism" award
22 Oct 2010
Beijing-based Tibetan freelance writer Tsering Woeser has received the "2010 Courage in Journalism" award from the International Women's Media Foundation for her fearless efforts to report on human rights abuses in Chinese-occupied Tibet.
Lhasa born Woeser, a quarter-Han Chinese and three quarter-Tibetan, is a freelance writer, blogger for the site Invisible Tibet and contributor to Radio Free Asia. For more than eight years, since the publication of her second book Notes on Tibet, Woeser has been under constant scrutiny by the Chinese authorities.
Notes on Tibet, a set of frank essays about modern life in Tibet published in 2003, ran afoul with the Chinese authorities. The book became a best seller in China and was promptly banned as China believed it promoted the two nation theory.
She was brought to Beijing for ''re-education'' and told she would be fired from her job with Tibetan Literature, a government-controlled journal, unless she changed her point of view, to which, she refused.
Woeser has become one of the main sources of news about Tibet in China. Her books are banned in China and her blogs hijacked and destroyed. Her Skype accounts have been hacked into and stolen.
She was detained in August 2008 by police in Lhasa after she had gone to visit her family during the Beijing Olympics. She was accused of taking photographs of the army and police presence in Lhasa and held and interrogated for eight hours before she was released and forced to return to Beijing.
Woeser also commentates for Radio Free Asia, communicates via Facebook and Skype, conducts interviews with Tibetan refugees, and continues to write books for publication in Taiwan.
In 1988, Woeser had graduated from Southwest University for Nationalities in Chengdu with a degree in Chinese literature, making her one of the rare Tibetan authors and poet to write in Chinese.
