Digital Dharma Films

Rebecca Novick presents a fascinating story of a young Chinese american who was recently arrested and detained by Chinese authorities while traveling in Tibet. Here is an excerpt of the article that appeared the the Huffington Post on August 12th, 2008:

Wen was now convinced that the Chinese intelligence was reading her email. Back in Dharamsala, India, she had helped to start an organization called Raise Tibetan Flags Campaign. “We’re trying to promote awareness and dialogue about what’s going on in Tibet by raising Tibetan flags worldwide. I’d been in contact with people in Dharamsala about the campaign. It’s just become a part of the dialogue. After I received this email from Google, I seriously considered going back for the first time. I seriously feared for my safety.

It was such a foreign feeling because I grew up in Minnesota, where I could say whatever I want, read whatever I want, and write whatever I want without thinking anything of it. And all of a sudden this freedom was taken away and I was always looking over my shoulder. If it’s something you grew up with, you don’t think, ‘Oh, I’m so lucky because I can write whatever I want today’, or, ‘I’m so lucky because I can log onto whatever website I want today’. This isn’t just about Tibet. This is about a sixth of the world that don’t even know what they’re missing because state propaganda is just that good.”

At 11:40 that same night the police raided Wen’s hotel. “They pounded and yelled at every single door until they got to mine. They looked around the room and warned me, ‘If you do anything suspicious, there’ll be consequences’. After they left, I was shaking.”

Wen decided to return to Chengdu, and the next morning she bought a bus ticket bound to leave the next day. “I was chain-smoking by this point. The combination of the email, the hotel raid, and the tense atmosphere was emotionally draining. I honestly don’t know how people live in that kind of fear.”

What Wen didn’t know at the time was that her Tibetan colleagues in India had just received a very strange email from her that she had never sent. She was also the only one who had the password to her account.

—————————————————–
Date: Thursday, July 31, 2008, 1:29 AM

Subject: We got some foreigners in the mainland of PRC that was interested in the plan of RTFC.

the list contains details of 6 foreigners and 2 chinese.
—————————————————–

Wen decided to walk up to the local monastery to calm her mind. “It’s quite a steep climb and I went all the way to the rooftop. From there you get a panoramic view of Kardze. These regions are really beautiful. You can see the valley, the distant grasslands, and the snow-capped mountains in the background that surround the town. So I took pictures, but I couldn’t help myself–I took a few zoomed-in shots of the military base. I didn’t know that I was playing with fire.”

A plain-clothed Chinese man was holding up his cell phone unusually high in her direction. Wen didn’t think anything of it, but as she was walking down, the police officer who had come to her room and threatened her the night before, stopped her and told her to follow him to the police station. “I thought, this is it. I can’t believe I took those pictures.”

One of Wen’s less sensitive photos from the roof of Kardze Monastery

At the station, two plain-clothed police filmed her with hand-held camcorders, getting close in to her face. “It was very intimidating. I kept asking them ‘What’s wrong. What’s going on?’ All they would say was ‘Wait and see.’ I kept thinking, wait and see for what?” After a while, they drove Wen to her hotel where they confiscated her phone and her passports, including her American passport. I found myself saying, ‘I’m an American citizen. I have a right to call the US Embassy.’ I knew they weren’t going to let me call, but I said it anyway.”

Ten plain clothed Public Security Bureau officers were now in Wen’s hotel room. “The first thing they did was look through the photos on my camera. Of course, they found the shots of the military camp. They started whispering to each other. I said, ‘I’m sorry. I take pictures of everything. Look at the photos of the mountains and the valleys and the houses.’ But I knew I was in a lot of trouble.”

read the full story here:

Rebecca Novick: Arrested in Tibet: A Young American’s Journey of Fear.