CHINA-INTERNAL: HAN-TIBETAN TENSION

 The Tibetan news service Phayul reported on November 22, 2016, that an ethnic Han-Chinese woman from Shanghai broadcast a live post through the Chinese social media site menpai earlier last week, hurling offensive racial slur against Tibetans calling them an uncivilized race, unaccustomed to any culture and likened them to “garbage” and “low class villagers”. In her minute-long post that went viral, according to a translation done by a Tibetan, the Chinese woman asked, “Do you know what culture is? This backward, primitive and remote area which is called Tibet.These low class villagers, not qualified enough to use Chinese language, don't you hear me? You people deserve to be trampled under the Han Chinese feet." The post predictably attracted a lot of criticism especially from Tibetans residing outside China. A Taiwanese student and East Asia coordinator for International Tibet Network, Penghsuan Lee, wrote on Facebook that such comments are a “part of that sickly boastful culture that China (is) having now, and they'll have to swallow up the consequences anyway.” Tibetan activist and former SFT President, Tendor, also on Facebook said “A Shanghai Chinese woman is getting some flak for spewing a plethora of insults at Tibetans. But there's one thing she said which I fully support: that Tibet should be expelled from the Chinese map. Nothing would make us happier than to be disentangled from the last remaining colonial empire on earth.”


(Comment: According to Business Insider, an average of 1.8 billion posts including videos, photos and texts are uploaded by users in a day through prominent social media sites in China.)
 






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