Dissident Spotlight: Pema Rinchen
Pema Rinchen wrote a book about Tibetans' resistance to China's 2008 crackdown against the autonomous state. He spent four years in prison for it.
In 2008, China suppressed an uprising of Tibetans, who had begun a series of protests throughout the country and even partially outside of it. Chinese Communist Party members arrested and tortured monks and nuns over the protests and eventually quelled them.
Then in 2010, the Chinese government mishandled a devastating earthquake that struck the region. Government officials in charge of relief funnelled money to themselves instead of to food, water, and infrastructure for Tibetans affected by the earthquake.
Pema Rinchen had the courage to collect those failures in a book called Look. In 2011, Rinchen was arrested, then beaten so badly that he was moved to a hospital the next day. The Chinese government put him under surveillance after his release, making his second book an even riskier venture.
Rinchen was arrested again in 2020 and not sentenced until September 2022. He was sentenced to four years in prison for “inciting separatism” and “endangering state security.”
Good Journalists vs. Bad Leaders
Done properly, journalism and its goals are completely at odds with the goals of bad leaders.
Public figures who can’t lead properly don’t want their incompetence on full display. However, the people affected by poor leadership need to know how their leaders are failing them. In democracies, citizens can vote their worst leaders out of office — or elevate new ones to office, as is their right.
But people living in authoritarian countries need to know how they’re being used by their leaders, too. Even if they can’t vote, citizens need to know how much danger they’re in from their leaders’ overreach and the reasons that ordinary people can’t live productive lives.
Uncovering corruption and bad behavior is a vital job under any type of government. At their best, journalists perform this important job instead of wasting their work on trivial or distracting stories. Rinchen is among these great journalists and will hopefully be able to write and publish his second book upon his release.