page_title: Tenzin Tsundue
section_title: Activism
hierarchical_section_title: Tenzin Tsundue / Activism
caption_attribution_description: I was chatting online with Qingchen, a schoolteacher friend of mine in China. I helped her install a patch on Flickr that allows her to view otherwise censored content. (Flickr, along with many other websites, are filtered in many parts of China). We usually talk about current events and culture. She asked, &quot;Did you hear about the Olympic torch in France and elsewhere?&quot; She also showed me a video of &quot;hooligans&quot; attacking a handicapped girl who was trying to carry the torch. What was our usual good-natured tête à tête somehow turned bitter as I asserted the usual Western line that China is crushing Tibet's culture--and she carried on with &quot;CNN is all lies,&quot; &quot;we are helping Tibet to modernize,&quot; &quot;Tibetans are violent hooligans,&quot; and that the Dali Lama (sp?) is fomenting this &quot;separatist&quot; sentiment. Politics aside, the argument ended badly, and left a sour taste in my mouth.
context_page_description: Tenzin Tsundue is a poet, writer and Tibetan activist. He won the first-ever Outlook-Picador Award for Non-Fiction in 2001. He has published four books to date which have been translated into several languages: Crossing the Border, Kora, Semshook, and Tsen-göl. Tsundue's writings have also appeared in various publications around the world including the International PEN, Outlook, and The Times of India. In 2002 the Indian edition of the international fashion magazine Elle, named him among India's 50 most stylish people.
  Tenzin Tsundue joined Friends of Tibet in 1999 and is the current General Secretary. Tsundue lives in Dharamshala, North India.
context_section_description: Tsundue has been involved in Tibet's independence movement since his student days.  But he caught international media attention in January 2002 when he climbed the scaffolding outside the hotel where PRC Premier Zhu Rongji was staying in Mumbai; he displayed a banner with the words ""Free Tibet: China, Get Out" and a Tibetan flag while shouting pro-Tibetan slogans before being arrested by Indian police.
  In April 2005 he repeated a similar one-man protest when PRC Premier Wen Jiabao was visiting the southern city of Bangalore. Standing on the balcony of a 200-foot-high tower at the Indian Institute of Science, he unfurled a red banner that read "Free Tibet" while shouting "Wen Jiabao, you cannot silence us".  As a result of his actions, the Indian police ordered a travel ban and Tsundue was ordered not to leave the town of Dharamshala, when the Chinese President Hu Jintao visited India in November 2006.
  In 2008, Tsundue announced his intention of taking part in a return march from Dharamshala to Tibet, that was being organized as a part of the "Tibetan People's Uprising Movement", a united effort put together by five major Tibetan NGOs.  Tsundue has been wearing a red band around his head since 2002 which he says is the mark of his pledge that he would work for the freedom of his country, and would never take it off until Tibet is free.
caption: Protest against China in India, 19 April 2008
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