On the evening of July 15, the New School for Democracy Association joined a vigil co-organized by the Dalai Lama Tibetan Religious Foundation, the Tibetan Welfare Association in Taiwan, the Taiwan Tibet Human Rights Link, the Taiwan Labour Front, and other groups, mourning Lobga Rangzen’s self-immolation and protesting the PRC’s Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress. The Association’s Project Manager, Tsai Chih-hao, spoke on behalf of the Hong Kong community, joining Tibetan, Uyghur, and Taiwanese civil society groups at Liberty Square to mourn the exiled Tibetan Lobga Rangzen and voice concern over the Chinese government’s long-standing repression of Tibetans and its continued assimilation policies.
The vigil opened with the Tibetan national anthem, a moment of silence, the offering of khatas, chanting, and remarks from various speakers. Participants symbolically tore up the PRC Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, protesting the government’s use of legal instruments to advance ethnic assimilation, cultural erasure, and thought control.
Lobga Rangzen self-immolated in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York on July 2 this year, protesting with his life the Chinese government’s long-term political repression of Tibetans and the newly enacted law. In a video left beforehand, he urged the world not to stop at mourning, but to keep safeguarding Tibetan language, culture, and religion, and to continue working toward freedom and dignity for Tibetans.
We believe a people’s freedom to use their own language, preserve their culture, practice their religion, and carry on their historical memory is a right protected under international human rights law. Any government that systematically restricts a minority’s language, culture, religion, or identity in the name of law not only violates fundamental human rights but also inflicts lasting harm on cultural diversity and free society.
In recent years, the Chinese government has tightened political control over Tibetans, Uyghurs, southern Mongolians, and the people of Hong Kong under the banners of “national security” and “ethnic unity,” advancing assimilation through law, education, and administration, and steadily compressing space for minority languages, religion, cultural transmission, and civil society. These actions extend beyond its borders — through transnational repression — threatening exile communities, overseas advocates, and democracy movement participants worldwide.
Lobga Rangzen has reminded the world, in the most solemn way, that what deserves attention is not only individual sacrifice, but the conditions that keep producing such tragedies. When a people must pay such a price simply to preserve their culture, language, and identity, the international community must not choose silence.
The New School for Democracy will continue monitoring human rights challenges facing Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, and the Chinese government’s expanding transnational repression. We stand with the exiled Tibetan community and all who are oppressed, supporting every people’s peaceful pursuit of freedom, democracy, human rights, and dignity, and call on the international community to jointly resist authoritarian expansion.
In the face of authoritarianism, silence has never been neutral — it only lets oppression spread. Only by speaking out and standing together can we safeguard democracy, freedom, and human rights.