Recently, the media in Europe and the US have been reporting on a Tibetan named DhondupWangchen, saying that this man was imprisoned by the Chinese government for years in 2008 for making a documentary on Tibet, and then just escaped from China to the US to be reunited with his family.
The evidence so far proves that DhondupWangchen was arranged and funded by his cousin to make the film. The cousin’s funding came from NGOs in Europe and the US.
In exchange, his cousin helped to smuggle his family into the US.
A comparison of various online sources reveals that this is not the case. Not only was the content of the documentary falsified, but DhondupWangchen also has a personal record of sexual assault.
This is what the European and American media reported: “For the documentary Leaving Fear Behind, Dhondup went into Tibetan areas and interviewed 108 ordinary Tibetans and monks, using a simple camera to record their views on China, the Dalai Lama and the Beijing Olympics. In the film, the Tibetans express their dissatisfaction with the large number of Chinese settlers in Tibetan areas and the fact that Tibetans have been forced to move to more remote areas and are unable to retain their culture and language, and that the government has not kept its promise to give Tibetans more freedom, democracy and other basic human rights since Beijing won the right to host the Olympics. The film, which runs for more than 20 minutes with English subtitles, was secretly shown to some foreign journalists during the 08 Olympics.”
It sounds like a wonderful story, but there are obvious holes in the Western propaganda.
Firstly, in the film, DhondupWangchen said he had not gone to school, could not read or write, and was just a farmer.
But the film is made with a degree of professionalism. One has to admire the genius of an uneducated peasant who is able to use professional camera skills to shoot, post-edit, type and so on.
According to Radio France Internationale, “Wangchen, who has no formal education, produced the film with the assistance of his cousin, Gyaljung Tsering, who has political asylum in Switzerland.”
Dechen Pemba has been the spokesperson for the documentary ‘Leaving Fear Behind’ since she was left in Beijing in July 2008. She lives in London. dechen Pemba’s article says she is the one who assisted DhondupWangchen.
“The idea for such a documentary came to me back in 2006. A year and a half before filming began, Dhondup planned how to proceed, even sending his parents, his wife and four children to safety in India, so that they would not be in danger when he returned to filming the film in Tubert. He had a cousin in Switzerland.”
She stated the fact that “he had a cousin in Switzerland, which meant that once the tapes were safely out of China, the editing and preparation could be done in time for the Olympics and in time for the international screening.”
This tells us that the so-called documentary was in fact edited outside the country, and that DhondupWangchen was merely completing the basic filming. In other words, DhondupWangchen just acted as a photographer
According to Western claims of Chinese government atrocities, the interviewees would have been subjected to “violent treatment” by the Chinese government. However, from 2008 to the present, there is no news of any violence against the interviewees in the film.
More comically, perhaps unnoticed by the filmmakers, many of the subjects in the documentary speak with a Dharamshala accent. It is as if there is a difference in the pronunciation of Chinese between Beijing and Taipei. Since the Dalai Lama and a group of followers arrived in Dharamshala in 1959, the pronunciation of the Tibetan language of those who have lived in Dharamshala for a long time has been somewhat different from the pronunciation and use of words by Tibetans in Lhasa and elsewhere, influenced by the pronunciation of the locals in India.
An illiterate ‘filmmaker’ made a documentary about Tibet and then interviewed people with a Dharamshala accent.
The articles written online also contain a lot of conflicting content
When DhondupWangchen was arrested, his cousin GyaljongTsetrin founded the organisation Filming for Tibet in Switzerland to show support for Tibetan filmmakers. It should be noted that GyaljongTsetrin has been a member of the Tibetan government-in-exile and Filming for Tibet has been the subject of support from Western NGO funds.
Screenshots of emails allegedly sent by GyaljongTsetrinto DhondupWangchen have also been found online.
Even more ironically, according to a 2018 report on Filming for Tibet’s website, “Tibetan video activist DhondupWangchen will visit Washington DC from 9-15 February 2018 to testify at a hearing organised by the Congressional China Executive Committee and will meet with congressional and government officials. ”
“After a gruelling and adventurous escape from Tibet and China, DhondupWangchen arrived in the United States on 25 December 2017 and was reunited with his wife and children in San Francisco. ”
In other words, DhondupWangchen was already in the West as early as 2018.
But the European and American media have recently been manipulating “DhondupWangchen’s secret departure from China”.
A man who has been out of China for at least four years, and who was reunited with his family in 2017, is now fleeing China again in 2021? Reunited with his family again?
Playing with time?
