Taiwan Church News

3304 Edition

June 22 - 28, 2015

Church Ministry

Writing Against Oppression Of Human Rights, Winners Of Free Tibet Literary Award Are Announced

Reported by Chiu Kuo-rong

On June 20, winners of the first Free Tibet Literary Award were announced atDeng Liberty Foundation(DLF) in Taipei. Mr. Lee Ming-yong, chairman of DLF, emphasized "Standing for truth, poets and writers are responsible to write against the oppression of human rights". He hoped the winners of this Free Tibet Literary Award would keep fighting for human rights in their future writing.

The writers competing this literary award were relatively young: the eldestwinner was born in 1977, the youngest is even a college sophomore now, and 8 out of 13 winners of this award were still students. DLF remarked that it became obvious that the issues of Tibet freedom and universal human rights had accumulated more and more momentum and support from the youth of Taiwan.

Mr. Dawa Thering, chairman of Dalai Lama Tibet Religion Foundation, wasinvited to award the winners. He pointed out that a common worry among the democratic activists of Hong Kong and Taiwan is that Today's Hong Kong may possibly be tomorrow's Taiwan.

In the same vein, Tibet's story was a tragic precedent for Taiwan, DawaThering said. He believed though many Taiwanese understood how China treated Tibet in the last century, there were still a lot of people who knew nothing about this tragedy. And this Free Tibet Award meant to give Taiwanese a different perspective to Tibet and her culture, hence an alternative thinking to know this world. "Seeing your care about Tibet, we feel not lonely. And we are more confident about the future," said Thering.

Lee Ming-yong lamented that any Taiwan literary award dared not take up theissues of Taiwan's dire realities. He stressed the instinct of literature was to critique and fight against injustice, just like there were many Palestinian literature resisting the hegemony of the Israel. "Standing for truth, poets and writers should write against the oppression of human rights. And such literary writing is important", reiterated Lee.

Translated by Peter Wolfe