statement in solidarity with Tibet

It is my honour to speak in front of all of you, our Tibetan brothers and sisters, as a person born and raised in Hong Kong. I wouldn’t have imagined when I was bracing teargas in the front, choking from asthma, determined to die for Hong Kong in 2014, to have met my husband at the end of the protest, who brought me over to America, and then five years later today, to be standing here, speaking to friends from Tibet. I would have never known that suffering is even greater when you no longer suffer with your people, but watch them suffer from abroad. I wouldn’t have known it’s more painful when you can’t die for your home, but have to watch it dying. In the past five years, I haven’t known what to make out of my presence in America. I lived like a hollowed tree. Everything felt wrong no matter what I did. To be healthy is wrong, to be safe is wrong; all because my people are suffering back home, and I should’ve been one of them. I flew back to Hong Kong three times last year to fight with my people, only to learn how un-HongKong I have become after years of being away. But being more un-Hong Kong didn't make me more American. My pro-regime parents have even closed the door on me permanently. Where in the world can I go? But 6000 out of more than 7000 arrestees in Hong Kong are under age 30, and police are still arresting more every day, and there are more than 400 mysterious suicides and deaths reported as of last month. I created the Bauhinia Project in the midst of Hong Kong’s protests last year, an anonymous identity to translate the voices of my people into a language of poetry that can speak to every heart in this world. I told Hong Kong, “I have no greed for life. It’s just that what I can do for you can only be done away from you.” My Hong Kong is the world now.

Tonight, having a Hongkonger to speak words in solidarity for Tibetans wouldn’t be possible in Hong Kong or Tibet. It’s only in America that it’s possible to have other oppressed peoples in the world come out in solidarity with each other, who live just across the street from each other. Last year, we appeared in the Tibetan community, Chilean community, Palestinian community, democratic Chinese community, and protests for Kashmir, Rojava, and Native Hawaiians. What made it possible for us all to be here today, to come together and speak for our people back home, is that 500 nations of 10 million Native people on this continent were nearly wiped out by European settlers over a genocide of five centuries to make room for what it is today. I’m not only talking about how the discovery of Peruvian potatoes, Bolivian silver, tobacco, cotton, tomato, rubber, asphalt, chocolate, vanilla, and medicine changed the world, or how the Iroquois Confederacy shaped U.S. federalism, I’m talking about 500 tribes alone in today’s California, who just three centuries ago ran for their lives, hiding, starving to death in the mountains of Santa Rosa, San Rafael, Mendocino, all the way up to Mt. Shasta; I’m talking about how the Spanish Franciscan fathers brainwashed, enslaved, forcibly Christianized the people here in San Francisco all the way down to San Diego, just like what is happening to the Uyghur people in East Turkistan today. I’m not talking about a broken past, or a new-agey spirituality, or an exotic people. In the east bay, where I traveled from for today’s events, is the land Huchiun, where Lisjan people were, and still are, the descendants of the stewards of this land. We must not forget why Hongkongers and Tibetans can come together tonight in solidarity against the Chinese Communist Party’s tyranny from across the Pacific Ocean. It’s because of all the blood under every inch of our feet shed by the people who took care of the land here for thousands of years, and every lost soul before us who fought for freedom and equality against the unequal, dehumanizing beginning of America.

Tibet: the Wet'suwet'en people in Canadian British Columbia are now out in the cold to protect their ancestral land from another pipeline construction, just like the Sioux at Standing Rock three years ago in South Dakota; two Sundays ago, the Sámi people in Sweden are threatened by the killing of their reindeer for winning a court judgment to reclaim their land; and last fall also marked the 50th anniversary of the Native American occupation of Alcatraz, an anniversary we also joined to be blessed by the sunrise there together. Tibet, you are not alone. My Tibetan friends, I feel you here tonight, not because of our common enemy, but because of the human in me and in you. May we send our thoughts and feelings tonight to the suffering people in Tibet, in Hong Kong, and all over the world. Humanity is only one. Free Tibet. Free Hong Kong.

10 March 2020
San Francisco