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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by ProPublica.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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In his first public speech since knee replacement surgery in June, the Dalai Lama spoke on Friday about how living in exile had brought awareness about Tibet and Buddhism to a global audience.
“If I had not been a refugee, I may be sitting on a high throne in Lhasa, Tibet,” the Tibetan spiritual leader told over 100 Tibetans and other well-wishers gathered at the Dalai Lama Library and Learning Center in Ithaca, New York.
“By coming into exile, I had an opportunity to travel around the world explaining the essence of Buddhism to a wider audience, building a human-to-human connection that has proved to be beneficial and connect with many people globally,” he said.
“People around the world today feel a deep sense of closeness and unity with Tibet and Tibetans,” said the 89-year-old spiritual leader during his first visit to the center that was established by the Namgyal Monastery.
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The center, which opened to the public in September 2023, includes a digital audio archive with 40,000 hours of the Dalai Lama’s teachings, about 4,000 books with translations of ancient texts on the evolution of Buddhist thought, and Buddhist artifacts from India and Tibet.
Clad in the finest Tibetan attire and holding white silk ceremonial scarves, Tibetans of all ages stood in long rows in the center’s premises to welcome the Dalai Lama.
The Dalai Lama at the Dalai Lama Library and Learning Center in Ithaca, New York, Aug. 16, 2024. (RFA) The roughly 100-strong Tibetan community in Ithaca had spent weeks helping with the preparations at the center.
“We all took turns to volunteer at the center over the past month, doing everything from gardening to cleaning to hoisting prayer flags and other chores with the intention of making the center as beautiful and as clean and as ready as possible to receive His Holiness,’ said Tenzin Tsokyi, a resident.
Oneness of humanity
In his address on Friday, the Dalai Lama reaffirmed his commitment to serving the Tibetan people and promoting the Buddhist tradition, and emphasized the importance of preserving their religious and cultural heritage.
“Everyone has done their best, and I encourage you to keep doing so,” he told those gathered at the center.
“I was born in Amdo and have had good relationships with people since my childhood,” he said. “And now, even as I am aging, I have built relationships with people from all over the world.
“Under the concept of oneness of humanity, I have received compassion and care from others,” he said. “No matter where I go in the three provinces of Tibet, I never waver in my belief in our shared humanity.”
The Dalai Lama at the Dalai Lama Library and Learning Center in Ithaca, New York, Aug. 16, 2024. (RFA) The Dalai Lama, who celebrated his 89th birthday last month, has been in the United States since late June for medical treatment.
After undergoing successful knee surgery at a top New York hospital, the Dalai Lama has been recovering and undergoing physical therapy in Syracuse, New York. Dr. David Mayman, chief of the adult reconstruction and joint replacement who performed the surgery, on June 28 said the Dalai Lama was progressing positively.
On Aug. 22, more than 10,000 Tibetans, Mongolians and people of Himalayan communities based in North America are scheduled to offer a collective long life prayer offering to the Dalai Lama at the UBS Arena in New York.
The Dalai Lama at the Dalai Lama Library and Learning Center in Ithaca, New York, Aug. 16, 2024. (RFA) The following day, the Dalai Lama is scheduled to depart for India via Switzerland.
The Dalai Lama arrived in New York on June 23, marking his first visit to the United States in over seven years and his first overseas trip since November 2018.
Translated by Tenzin Dickyi and Tashi Wangchuk. Edited by Tenzin Pema and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Dolkar and Nordhey Dolma for RFA Tibetan.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Wang Shujun is 76. A Chinese American scholar, he says he loves the U.S. and has dedicated the last thirty years of his life to advocating for democracy in China from his adopted home of Flushing, New York. The FBI says he was living a double life and is actually a spy for Beijing.
Is he an American patriot caught up in a game he doesn’t understand — or an agent for a foreign government living a double life?
Discover the truth in RFA’s thrilling 5-episode podcast series, “Master of Deceit,” launching July 20.
Read more in RFA’s exclusive special report, “Historian. Activist. Spy? For years an American academic pushed for democracy in his native China. The FBI claims it was a front.”
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Tara McKelvey and Jane Tang for RFA Investigative.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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A well-known Uyghur entrepreneur who set up an international trading company in Xinjiang is serving a life sentence for his alleged involvement with extremists abroad, people with knowledge of the situation told RFA Uyghur.
Ablikim Kurban, who would now be about 46 years old, established the Xinjiang Sesame Seed International Trade Co. in Urumqi in April 2017 and began selling imported seeds.
Prior to setting up his business, Kurban had visited factories and companies in Egypt. While there, he also met with Uyghur students from his hometown of Kumul, called Hami in Chinese, who were attending Al-Azhar University in Cairo.
Muslim-majority Egypt is among several countries blacklisted by Chinese authorities for travel by Uyghurs because of a perceived threat of religious extremism.
Chinese authorities pointed to Kurban’s trip and his alleged involvement with “terrorists” as the reason for his arrest on July 8, 2017, a Xinjiang police officer and a security chief on the neighborhood committee where Kurban previously lived in Kumul told RFA.
Relatives said they still don’t know his whereabouts.
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Kurban was one of hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs arrested during China’s roundup and mass detentions of Muslims in “re-education” camps across Xinjiang, which began around 2017, in the name of fighting terrorism and religious extremism.
Uyghurs like Kurban who traveled to other Muslim-majority countries were especially at risk of being detained on unproven grounds that they had been in contact with what Chinese authorities claimed were terrorists or extremists.
A police officer who is based in Kumul’s Taranchi coal mine district, where Kurban used to work, told Radio Free Asia that authorities detained him in 2017 because of his trip to Egypt.
“They didn’t tell us the reason prior to his arrest, we only learned about it after he was arrested,” she said.
“He was arrested for getting involved with an extremist organization in Egypt,” she said, adding that the information came from state security police.
During Kurban’s visit to Egypt, Chinese authorities ordered Uyghur students enrolled in schools there and in other countries, including Turkey, France, Australia and the United States, to return to their hometowns in Xinjiang for “registration.”
In some cases, authorities held parents hostage by locking them up until their children returned, and some students who did go back disappeared or were jailed, sources in Xinjiang and Egypt told RFA in a May 2017 report.
Authorities in Egypt collaborated with Chinese authorities to round up scores of Uyghur students — many of them studying religion at Al-Azhar — and detain and deport them, according to the report.
A resident of the Taranchi coal mine district told RFA that Kurban was focused on his business and his family and had no interest in politics.
The resident, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, said authorities also arrested Kurban’s wife, Gulshan Tohti, a month after detaining him, leaving a grandmother to care for the couple’s three children.
Tohti was released in August 2023, though it is unknown what she was charged with and whether she spent six years of detainment in an internment camp or prison.
Kurban initially followed in his father’s footsteps after graduating from high school and became a miner in Taranchi, which is in eastern Xinjiang.
He had greater ambitions though, and in the early 2000s he founded a factory in Kumul that produced plastic doors and windows, becoming one of the most successful entrepreneurs in his hometown.
In 2015, Kurban decided to shift his business to food imports. But his arrest and detention in 2017 cut his plans short, and Xinjiang Sesame Seed International Trade was shut down.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Jim Snyder.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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After serving a 14-month prison sentence on various charges, Algerian journalist Mustapha Bendjama assumed his life would return to normal as the editor-in-chief of Le Provincial, a local independent news site in the eastern city of Constantine.
“I was wrong,” said Bendjama, who was released April 2024.
In a phone interview with CPJ, Bendjama revealed that his contract at Le Provincial has not been renewed after eight years with the outlet. According to Bendjama, his employers cited orders from “high up” in their decision to terminate his employment, but the journalist believes government officials are behind ongoing efforts to censor critical voices like his in the country.
CPJ’s emails to Le Provincial requesting comment about the reason of letting Bendjama go did not receive any replies.
“It’s been exactly five years that they have been targeting me,” he said.
Since the start of the February 2019 anti-government Hirak protests which ousted President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Bendjama has been arrested on multiple occasions, repeatedly summoned for questioning about his work, and banned from traveling outside of Algeria. After Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was elected in 2019, Bendjama said authorities stepped up their targeting of him, culminating in his imprisonment in February 2023.
Journalism is more than Bendjama’s sole source of income — the practice is also his passion. Now hoping to restart his career, Bendjama says the future of his profession is unclear in a country where press freedom continues to decline due to the current regime’s continuous censorship and fear of another uprising against them.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity. CPJ’s emails to the Algerian ministry of interior requesting comment on Bendjama’s prosecution did not receive any replies.
How did the Hirak protests mark a turning point in Algeria’s press freedom?
Since the beginning of Hirak [in 2019], and the election of Tebboune, the government launched waves of arrests against independent and critical journalists, including Khaled Drareni, Sofiane Merakchi, Moncef Aït Kaci, and many more. I too was briefly arrested many times in that period before my imprisonment [in February 2023].
How did these arrests and harassment affect your ability to do your work?
On Friday June 28, 2019, I was violently arrested and physically attacked by police officers before being released several hours later. I have been arrested many times since then and always on Friday, the day of the weekly Hirak demonstrations. To stop me from covering the demonstrations or speaking to other journalists, I was often detained for several hours and released at night.
The impact this has had on my ability to do my job was real. I spent most of my time in police stations and courts instead of being in my editorial office or in the field. I hardly had time to do careful work. They [authorities] did what they wanted. Hit me where it hurts. They are trying to stop me from practicing journalism, and by associating me with trials and crimes I never committed, my sources have become afraid to speak to me. Not to mention the fact that no media outlet is willing to recruit me anymore, for fear of suffering the same fate as Interface Média.
Algerian authorities brought multiple legal cases against you. How were they connected with your work as a journalist?
In the first case, they charged me with allegedly helping journalist Amira Bouraoui flee to France and founding a criminal organization. I have never met Amira, so even though all the evidence was in my favor, the court convicted me regardless. The other case was more dangerous. They convicted me on charges similar to those that were used to convict journalist Ihsane el-Kadi, including receiving foreign funding harmful to national interest and dissemination of classified information with the attempt to harm state institutions, espionage, and belonging to a terrorist group. All these charges were given to me after they illegally opened my smartphone, which they had confiscated following my arrest in the first case. They found communications with someone who works for an NGO called Global Integrity. I had submitted a report on democracy and transparency in Algeria to this group as a freelancer.
For the other charges regarding the dissemination of classified information, they stem from an article I wrote for Le Provincial on corruption that I shared with Algerian journalist Abdou Semmar, who self-exiled in France and was sentenced to death in absentia after being convicted of spreading false news. He wanted to make a video about the article for his website. The information I shared with him was not classified, as opposed to my conversation with him, which was private. It feels like the Amira Bouraoui case was a trap to get to me first and then add whatever charges they wanted later to keep me in prison.
Now that you’ve been released, are you still being targeted for your work?
I am still not allowed to travel outside of the country, and this is illegal because I was unconditionally released from prison after finishing my entire sentence. I tried to travel to Tunisia in May, and they told me at the border that I am not allowed to leave Algeria. The only travel ban order I received was in November 2019, after a court accused me of attacking national interest because I shared a news report on Facebook that leaked information from a police investigation about me. This travel ban order was valid for three months, with the possibility of renewal only one time. Since I was acquitted in this case a while ago, these measures against me are arbitrary and just unfair.
How does losing your role at Le Provincial change the protections you have as a journalist in the country?
I have been finding it difficult to work in the field of journalism ever since I was let go of my job. As a staffer I was somewhat protected under the press code, and through my employer, to carry my investigations and research as a journalist. However, without my job in a news outlet, the government does not officially consider me a journalist, and therefore can prosecute me as a civilian and I can then get heavier sentences. So any work I do in the future as a freelancer might lead to heavy criminal charges.
Right after my release from prison, I was also targeted by a police officer who was intimidating me on the street. I was coming out of a bar and was on the phone with a friend, and this officer stops me in the middle of the street and starts asking me questions about the phone conversation I was having with my friend. He threatened to arrest me but when he saw that people started to gather around us, and I insisted on not answering his questions, he let me go.
What is the state of independent journalism in Algeria now?
Currently, we can say that there is no form of press freedom in this country. Since Tebboune came to power, his administration has been intimidating most independent news outlets that are critical of the government, by either blocking them, or arresting their journalists. This is to make sure that only pro-government voices exist in Algeria. They can’t close 10 outlets at once. This has been happening over a couple of years so to not attract attention. And they have succeeded.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Image by Matthew TenBruggencate.
The fundamental problem we face today in world affairs is our failure to adjust our international institutions to the imperative needs of a rapidly evolving age.
The UN Secretary-General said as much last September when in a speech before the General Assembly he noted: “We cannot effectively address problems as they are if institutions don’t reflect the world as it is.”
The world has become far more complex than it was in 1945 when the current global governance system, based primarily on the UN Charter, was created.
This system of international cooperation is no longer fit for purpose. It struggles to cope with the multiple unresolved crises we face, often because it lacks the appropriate jurisdiction, adequate resources, and the conceptual framework to effectively diagnose the problems and bring about credible solutions, and because it is deemed fundamentally unfair.
And so, we move on towards a potentially catastrophic future of accelerating climate change, the continued unraveling of our nuclear order, rising and destructive nationalisms, increasing conflict, more frequent pandemics, and an economic paradigm that cannot deliver well being for all.
The UN Charter was adopted 79 years ago, on June 26, 1945. So, here’s a thought experiment: If we were to start from a completely blank page, with no prior mistakes to correct or historical context to maintain, what system of international governance would we design and how might it function?
Adaptation and reinvention are a part of the natural course of things. One can both support the UN for its achievements and acknowledge the need for its transformation. Our call to reform the UN comes from our desire to see it survive and thrive.
The Charter was always meant to be a living document. In adopting it in 1945, then U.S. President Harry Truman made this clear: “This Charter will be expanded and improved as time goes on. No one claims that it is now a final or a perfect instrument. It has not been poured into any fixed mold. Changing world conditions will require readjustments.”
The Charter’s own Articles 108 and 109 were deliberately drafted to institutionalize the possibility of its evolution over time. The main issue to be addressed by these articles from the very inception of the UN was the veto in the Security Council. This should be seriously reexamined, as recommended in a recent report of an expert body convened by the Secretary-General. But so, too, could the Charter place a greater emphasis on climate change, on which it is silent; it could articulate the rules of a World Parliament to make it more representative; it could strengthen the UN’s ability to enforce decisions; provide more predictable financing, and better engage the world’s citizens in international decision-making.
The most common argument against updating the Charter is that with today’s fraught geopolitical landscape, we risk ending up with something worse
First, there will never be a perfect time. As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.
Second, Charter reform will take years. The mood will change in time. But we need to start the process, or at the very least, the conversation.
Third, Charter reform would address the very issues that make many nations so mistrustful, including perceived double standards in the application of international law and a global governance system that privileges the interests of a few powerful countries at the expense of others. Creating a fairer playing field would incentivize countries to engage in good faith.
And finally, yes, there are risks involved in UN Charter reform, but there are even greater risks in continuing our current path.
This is why the exercise of imagining a new start, from scratch, could be helpful. Imagination isn’t subject to a veto (Charter reform requires that all five permanent members consent to the change), nor is it bound by the current political loggerheads which can make even marginal change seem extremely difficult.
Imagination can open the door to ideas both great (such as questioning the role of state sovereignty in a world of global interdependence); and small (like requiring that the General Assembly hold a session whenever a veto is used in the Security Council).
What we must avoid, regardless of the fraught political moment and our own trepidation, is to delay conceiving of something new out of a misplaced deference to a system that is not delivering credible solutions to existential threats.
We would do well to imagine what a new Charter might look like (as some have already begun doing); what principles it would be built on, what institutions it would give rise to, and how it could inspire the world to come together in a new shared endeavor. Imagine a new Charter drawn up by a far more representative display of the world’s many cultures and governments (only 51 countries existed when the current Charter was drafted whereas there are now some 200 sovereign nation-states. Once we have dared to imagine, we may be better equipped to bring some of the necessary changes into being.
The stakes could not be higher. A new path is needed. The question is whether we craft it intentionally, as a matter of conscious choice, or whether we suffer the horrific consequences of failure to act.
The UN Charter was always meant to be a living document. Perhaps now is the time to breathe some new life into it.
The post Breathing New Life into the UN Charter appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Dan Perell – Heba Aly.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The world-renowned linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky was discharged from a São Paulo hospital in Brazil last month as he continues to recover from a stroke last year that impacted his ability to speak. His wife, Valeria Wasserman Chomsky, told a Brazilian newspaper he still follows the news and raises his left arm in anger when he sees images of Israel’s war on Gaza. False reports that Chomsky had died went viral online in June. We speak with historian Vijay Prashad, who co-authored his latest book with Chomsky, The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power, and was able to visit him twice while in Brazil. He describes Chomsky as “a beloved friend, adviser, confidant, in some ways the one who helped explain what was happening in the world for decades.” When Prashad was with Chomsky, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also stopped by.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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“Another Wasted Life.” That’s the name of a remarkable new song by the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Grammy-winning artist Rhiannon Giddens. She released a video of the song on October 2 to mark International Wrongful Conviction Day. The song was inspired by Kalief Browder, a Bronx resident who died by suicide in 2015 at the age of 22 after being detained at Rikers Island jail for nearly three years, after being falsely accused at the age of 16 of stealing a backpack. He was held in solitary confinement for two years and was repeatedly assaulted by guards and other prisoners.
In the video for “Another Wasted Life,” Rhiannon Giddens features 22 people who were wrongly incarcerated. Together, they collectively served more than 500 years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. The video includes two men, David Bryant and Tyrone Jones, who each spent 40 years in prison. Another seven of the men each spent over 25 years locked up after wrongful convictions. Rhiannon Giddens made the video in partnership with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Israelis celebrated the return of the four hostages in Saturday’s raid. The four hostages — Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv — were all in good medical condition. Just hours after the rescue, thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv and other cities to protest Netanyahu’s government and to call for a deal to free the remaining hostages. We speak to Ami Dar, an Israeli social entrepreneur based in New York, who supports the exchange of hostages and prisoners and a permanent ceasefire deal. “Let’s get all the hostages back, and if that means that every single detainee and prisoner, Palestinian, is freed, then so be it. Life comes first,” says Dar, the executive director of Idealist.org. We also hear more from Maoz Inon, an Israeli peace activist whose parents, Bilha and Yakovi Inon, were killed in the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. “We are not going to compromise for anything less than a lasting peace,” he says.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Vicky Xu, a Chinese-born Australian journalist who was the target of a widespread campaign of online abuse by agents and supporters of Beijing after she exposed forced labor in Xinjiang, is fighting back against Chinese Communist Party propaganda by living her best life in democratic Taiwan, she told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview.
Xu, 29, has been learning martial arts and living a quiet life in Taiwan after quitting social media in the wake of trolling by pro-China accounts, who labeled her “anti-China” and “a traitor” as well as circulating fake nude photos of her.
“It’s not I who’s the traitor,” Xu said indignantly. “It’s the Chinese Communist Party.”
She said the government, who criticized her via state media in the wake of her expose of forced labor in Xinjiang, was betraying its own people.
Vicky Xu in Taipei, June 6, 2024.(Lee Tsung-han/RFA) Xu co-authored a report on forced labor in the region that was published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI, in 2021. Xu has previously also written for both the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and The New York Times.
Xu has since reopened some social media accounts, and was drawn to Taiwan because she is unable to go back to China now, and regards it as a relatively safe place from which to stand and face her demons, the traumatic legacy of the online abuse campaign.
Since being followed and stalked in Australia in the wake of the ASPI report, Xu said she now reacts with fear when she encounters people of East Asian appearance while out and about, and wanted to live for a while in Taiwan to overcome that phobia.
“My main impression since I’ve been living here is that people can live decently, and with dignity,” Xu said, adding that part of the draw was being able to speak Mandarin and eat Chinese food.
“It feels like a parallel universe, another China,” she said. “It’s a great place, and people who know me and know what I do respect me, or are even proud of me,” she said.
Vicky Xu plays the violin in an undated photo. (Courtesy of Vicky Xu) “There are so many issues in China where the government doesn’t treat people like human beings, and then the people themselves don’t treat each other as human beings,” Xu said. “The situation is very serious, and I think it needs to change.”
“Even if people abuse me in China, I still care about their interests, and about their safety,” Xu said. “For me, as a journalist, telling the truth is the most important thing. There’s no point otherwise; I don’t want to waste my life.”
‘Betrayed’
Xu was once a staunch supporter of the Chinese Communist Party, getting the five stars from China’s national flag tattooed on her ankle and posing on Tiananmen Square as a young woman from a small city in the western province of Gansu, a stop on the high-speed railway linking Xinjiang with the northwestern city of Lanzhou.
Vicky Xu shows off her tattoo of the five stars from the Chinese national flag in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. (Courtesy of Vicky Xu) She studied English-language broadcasting at Beijing’s Communications University, before accidentally finding out the truth about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre on a trip to Australia, which she describes as a “betrayal” for the young patriot she once was.
“I was so shocked because it was a huge example of how the Chinese Communist Party betrayed its own people,” she said. “June 4, 1989, was a huge stain on the history of Communist Party rule.”
“The Chinese people are educated to be loyal to the party, and to love the party, but that’s not possible for a normal and logical person … because the party doesn’t love you,” she said. “It just wants to suppress everything, including the concentration camps in Xinjiang and all kinds of human rights abuses.”
For Xu, who once bought the party line that the massacre was CIA propaganda, the revelation was a turning point.
Vicky Xu testifies on transnational repression by Beijing at the Czech Parliament. Undated. (Courtesy of Vicky Xu) “[It] was the starting point for my political enlightenment, and for my doubts about the legitimacy of Communist Party rule,” she said.
She said she secretly visited a number of survivors, family members of victims and former police officers in a bid to understand more about what happened that summer.
Xi ruling through his own trauma
Eventually, Xu dropped out of her broadcasting degree and went to Australia to study politics instead.
Since then, she has come to an understanding of the Communist Party under Xi Jinping as the product of multiple generations of trauma.
Vicky Xu entertains guests with her stand-up comedy routine. (Courtesy of Vicky Xu) “I really think Xi Jinping is ruling the country through his trauma, because very controlling people are usually acting from a deep sense of fear,” Xu said. “During the Cultural Revolution, his father was put in prison and his step-sister committed suicide, while Xi was ostracized by the rest of the offspring of party leaders and locked up in the party school.”
“When he escaped and ran back home to get something to eat from his own family kitchen, his own mother reported him to the authorities,” she said.
Xi should be getting psychotherapy, she said, but that nobody would dare to offer it to him.
Xu has even made these ideas into a stand-up comedy routine about “giving Xi Jinping a hug,” that she performs from time to time.
Death threats
Yet Xu still has times when she feels isolated, and remains vigilant for any sign of surveillance or harassment from supporters of Beijing, following her experiences elsewhere.
“I have received threats of death and sexual violence,” she said. “I had people standing guard in front of my home, and even intruding into the house to take pictures for no reason.”
Vicky Xu speaks to RFA Mandarin, June 6, 2024.(Lee Tsung-han/RFA) “When it comes to people like me, the Chinese Communist Party’s secret police, agents, or state security can harness the power of several provinces and departments to hunt me down, harass me, or intimidate me, or harm everyone in my social circle that they can see,” Xu said.
“It’s quite scary, because it feels like I’m being haunted,” she said. “I might be walking down the street in Australia, and everyone around me is living a normal life, but I have a ghost behind me, and when I turn around to look, I’m the only person who can see it.”
The constant fear has taken a toll on Xu’s mental health, leaving her with severe depression and other symptoms.
“One way I overcome it is to look at it like I would martial arts or surfing,” Xu said. “If you don’t look at the wave when it approaches, you’ll be knocked off the board. In boxing, if you don’t look at your opponent, you’ll be beaten up … worse, if you shut your eyes.”
Xu has been working hard on her martial arts, both for self-defense and mental health reasons, since she got to Taiwan, and finds regular sparring sessions a good way to forget about her troubles.
“For me, the most important thing about martial arts isn’t who I can beat up, or defeat, but that I am getting stronger, both physically and mentally,” Xu said, adding that Hong Kong martial arts legend Bruce Lee is a hero and a role model for her.
“I want to be the next Bruce Lee, only female,” she said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Hsia Hsiao-hwa for RFA Mandarin.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.