Taipei, Feb. 10 (CNA) The Chinese government hasn't eased up in its oppression of Tibet 40 years after the ravage of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese writer Wang Lixiong said Friday at a book launch in Taipei.
Wang is well-known for his books "Yellow Peril, " which is one of the best-selling books in the Chinese-speaking world but banned in China, and "Sky Burial: The Fate of Tibet, " which is about Tibetan culture.
"Forty years after [the cultural revolution], a shadow remains over Tibet. And the Chinese government hasn't restrained its control and oppression of Tibet, putting a lot of limitations on Tibetans," said the controversial writer who was briefly arrested in the early 1990s.
Wang's wife Woeser is a perfect example. Woeser, one of the few women Tibetan writers who writes in Chinese, lost her job as an editor after publishing a book in which she praised the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
The book launch featured three books by Woeser. One of the books, "Forbidden Memory: Tibet During the Cultural Revolution," includes almost three hundred pictures never before published. The photographs were taken by her father, a Chinese military officer in Tibet during
the cultural revolution.
"Looking at those pictures brought back a lot of memories and made me pretty emotional," said Tsegyam, Representative of the Tibet Religious Foundation of His Holiness The Dalai Lama. The foundation is the de facto office in Taiwan of the Government of Tibet in Exile, which is led by the Dalai Lama.
"Aside from numerous deaths, the greatest harm the cultural revolution has brought to the Tibetans is its destruction of the spirit and religious beliefs of Tibet," said Tsegyam, who experienced the cultural revolution as a little boy and years later fled from Tibet to India. "The revolution may have ended 30 years ago, but the suffering within the Tibetan culture is not over yet."
"Let's not forget what China's president Hu Jintao did in Tibet. He won the approval of his seniors and became the designated leader of the Chinese Communist Party because of what he did there," said political analyst Yang Hsien-hong, referring to Hu's political crackdown in early 1989 on Tibetan activists when he was Party Committee Secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region.
The Tibet issue will not be solved before there is a democractic, autonomous and free China, Wang Lixiong said. "If we don't have a democractic and highly autonomous China, how are we supposed to believe China will respect human rights and autonomy in Tibet?"