By Tenzin Dharpo
DHARAMSHALA, Nov.27: The reigning Miss Tibet Pema Choedon has claimed that two unidentified men kept following her during her travels to participate in the Miss Global beauty pageant in Manila, Philippines last month.
“I was followed by two Asian men during my flights both going to and coming back from Philippines when I went to participate in the Miss Global 2015 pageant,” said Pema Choedon, an English Literature student at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
The ordeal seems a tad farfetched and bordering on a larger than life movie script but on a closer inspection and listening to Pema Choedon, the incident in all fairness raise a reasonable doubt.
Pema Choedon, speaking to Phayul, said that she took Air India flight no.AI 314 on Oct. 9 from Indira Gandhi International Airport travelling to Hong Kong from where she boarded another flight connecting her to Manila, Philippines. After the pageant 17 days later, she took the same route back home taking Air India, flight no.AI 317 from Ninoy Aquino International to Hong Kong and again changing a flight that took her to New Delhi on Oct. 25. On all of her four flights and in transit, she noticed the two Asian men keeping a safe distance and tailing her, she said.
Pema said, “I don’t expect people to believe what I say but I think it transcends the fear of an individual women and puts out a larger question that if someone can targeted and tailed so easily, I fear that whoever is sending these men and spending such money has the resources to do more or far graver acts.
“I tried to speak to them during the flight but they didn’t respond and put me off instantly, and when we reached IGI New Delhi, I again approached them feeling frustrated to be pursued, but they just ran off, a normal person would not do these things. My travel agent told me that it is extremely difficult for two people to get into the same four flights on the same date, much less on the route I took, it was not a conventional route. They didn’t have any luggage and were wearing the same clothes on all the trips.”
Pema describes the two men to be Asian males, one fat and short and the other a darker toned person with long hair and always wearing a sun cap. On the day of the incident, she posted a face book post approximately around 6 in the evening that mentioned, “When I saw them for the fourth time in Indira Gandhi Airport, I was convinced that they are following me. They looked like Chinese spies.”
The implication of a surveillance assignment by a Chinese espionage outfit is perhaps unfounded in terms of concrete proof and evidence has a ringing of familiarity; Pema’s ordeal is not the only an isolated case where contestants in beauty pageants have been put under pressure. In two different beauty pageants that happened last month, two other contestants were coerced to withdraw or declined participation from the respective events, the common link between the two cases is China.
Miss Canada Anastasia Lin, a Falun Gong practitioner and an immigrant to Canada, was denied a visa to participate in the Miss World 2015 pageant in China. China refused to provide any explanation for the refusal apart from saying, “China does not allow any persona non grata to come to China.” Lin said despite threats to her family in China, she will continue to speak of human rights violations in the country of her birth as before. She is also a rights advocate.
In a similar case of pressure from China, Miss Taiwan Ting Wen Yi was ejected from the Miss Earth 2015 held in Vienna, Austria after she refused to wear a sash that read Miss Chinese Taipei. She told reporters, “I told them 30,000 times that Taiwan is Taiwan. I was born in Taiwan, my sash now says Taiwan, I represent Taiwan, and I’m going to use the name of Taiwan in appearing at this pageant.”
China’s interpretation of any global or social happening as an attack on its nationhood is not new; such state paranoia has been displayed time and again in the recent history. The scrutiny on beauty pageants has now added another profile to the Chinese relentless pursuit of an iron grip whether legitimately or otherwise.
