A Tibetan student flying a Tibetan national flag at a US University’s international event was protested by Chinese students citing it as a political behaviour. The campus incident of the students at the US university got into controversy over the misunderstanding by Chinese students according to a campus report.
“The specific controversy stemmed from concerns that were raised by a group of Chinese students at our GIM, regarding an email that we sent out that contained a picture [from] a previous Parade of Nations show that portrayed a student holding the Tibetan flag,” The Tufts Daily, a campus daily of the Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts quoted the president of I-Club, Nidhi Rao as informing of the report.
While the Chinese students demanded clarification from the club over the inclusion of Tibet in the campus event saying that such an inclusion recognizes Tibet as a country, the student organizers clarified that the event is a Parade of Nations event is … a celebration of cultures and nations and did not intend to use the word ‘country’.
Olive Baerde is Sophomore at the university from Tibet and she also raised the issued on her Facebook page exposing of Chinese students’ discussion in Wechat, Chinese micro-messaging app to protest against her inclusion in the campus international event. She has also explained of the controversy to the Tufts Daily.
“I was super surprised about this controversy because I never thought this was a problem. Many of the Chinese students who organized this protest are my friends and suitemates,” Baerde told the Daily in an email. “A nation is different from a sovereign state, and I think this is just a common language misunderstanding between Chinese and English translation.”
Photo: The Tufts Daily
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