DHARAMSHALA, February 19 : Tibetan activists and supporters allege that a cultural event dubbed as ‘Pan Asian Music Festival’ starting February 22 at the prestigious Stanford University is a publicity campaign to distract Americans from the current military crackdown in Tibet following two self immolation protests in Tibet this month.
Stanford University recently announced that it would be hosting the ‘Pan Asian Music Festival’ which the Tibetan exiles claim is being directly sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Culture, Confucius Institute, Chinese Consulate of San Francisco, and the Chinese controlled local government in Tibet. A large public protest is planned on Stanford’s campus the day of the Festival with Tibetans and supporters living in the Bay Area expected to join in the hundreds. Tibetan National Congress, Students for a Free Tibet- West, San Francisco Regional Tibetan Youth Congress and Stanford Friends of Tibet will jointly organize the protest.
The Festival also coincides with the Tibetan leader Dalai Lama’s first public event in San Francisco on Feb.22 in Bay Area.
“Tibetans become exoticised and portrayed as the ‘noble savage’. This event is nothing more than a Chinese government ‘soft power’ tactic to influence American opinion on Tibet and the Chinese Communist dictatorship,” said Michael Chen, spokesperson for Stanford Friends of Tibet. “Stanford would be allowing people to be brainwashed on its campus with no regard to the plight of Tibetan and Chinese refugees escaping persecution from China. We call on the school administration to do the right thing and cancel the event.”
Concerns have been raised in the past by many academic professionals in the US that the Chinese government is using American schools for propaganda campaigns and slowly pressuring educators into changing their curriculum to portray China from an official point of view. Tibetan exiles say there are documented cases of Chinese government funded Confucius Institutes pressuring Stanford to self-censor sensitive political topics, including human rights, Chinese dissent and Tibetan protests.
As concerns about academic freedom in the US grow, the Canadian Association of University Teachers recently called on Universities and Colleges to sever their ties with the Confucius Institutes, which it claimed were ‘subsidized’ and ‘supervised’ by the authoritarian government of China.
Tibetan activists and Tibet supporters are also worried about the vetting process for the Tibetan Dance Troupe coming to Stanford for the event. Jingdong Cai, the acting director of the Pan Asian Festival said he selected only those Tibetan dancers “permitted by the Chinese government to leave the country.”
Tibetan National Congress spokesperson, Gabriel Feinstein, said most Tibetans cannot leave Tibet unless they are able to vouch for their political loyalty to the CCP. “We are incredibly worried about the oversight of Chinese consular officials in San Francisco and the Tibetan dancers. It is incredibly dangerous for these dancers to have any contact with exile Tibetans in America or be seen to be sympathetic to His Holiness the Dalai Lama.”
