By Tenzin Dharpo
DHARAMSHALA, Dec.22: Well-known Chinese writer and scholar Wang Lixiong was recently (Dec.17) prevented from boarding a flight bound for Japan at Beijing Airport by Chinese officials for allegedly supporting the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Independence and ‘threatening national security interests.’
“I was prohibited from leaving the country before, but this is the first time it was clearly on national security grounds, I believe this is a new way of controlling human rights lawyers and other dissidents,” Wang Lixiong was quoted saying in a report by Kyodo News Services.
He had intended to travel to Japan and then to Taiwan to observe its presidential and legislative elections in January next year.
The vocal writer of social and ethnic divides; he has authored many publications on Xinjiang whose issues he opines was “Palestinized” and also on Tibet and Dalai Lama with works such as Sky Burial: The Fate of Tibet, Dialogues with the Dalai Lama. He is best known for his fictional political novel ‘Yellow Peril’.
He is married to Tibetan writer Woeser. The Beijing based blogger and activist who condemned the Beijing Olympics continues to be active on her advocacy for free speech and minority status in Tibet. Most of the couple’s work are banned in China and Tibet and continue to face stern state scrutiny.
The 62 year old Wang in a public statement for resigning from Chinese Writers Association in 2001 said, “It is not only acquiescence which is demanded, but also the annihilation of the whole personality, of all conscience and of all individual pride, that we are being made into crouching dogs. Belonging to this organization is no longer an honor, on the contrary, is a shame of any writer worthy of the name”.
