Pro-Tibet Chinese student harassed and bullied

On April 9, 2008 at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, two high-profile student 'protests' for and against Tibetan independence took place. Grace Wang (Wang Qianyuan 王千源), a 21 year old girl from Qingdao, Shandong, joined in the protest on the campus. Wang is a student at Duke University.

To the shock of many Chinese students at Duke and also at home in China, Wang was protesting for some kind of middle-ground between the foreign pro-Tibetan independence group and the Chinese anti-Tibetan independence group. She wrote ‘Free Tibet’ on the back of a student and also communicated with the Chinese side in Chinese.

In videos of the so-called ‘protests’ (see links at bottom of article), Wang makes a public speech in English, facing the Chinese students, and with the non-Chinese students behind her. Her comments include, “Just because I am Chinese does not mean that I can't think for myself."

On forum websites such as Han Wang and Tianya, photos of Wang as a schoolgirl in Shandong have appeared, along with Chinese netizens’ defamatory comments. Their comments range from "race-traitor" (汉奸) to "she can only marry one of the lamas now" (他现在只能嫁给喇嘛了).

In the last few days a pot of human faeces was emptied outside the door of Wang’s flat in Durham.

Global Voices Online has transcribed a letter from a friend of Wang's at Duke, dated April 15, stating that her parents' residence in Qinghai has been attacked by rocks, and that they are in hiding.