Tsewang Norbu

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Tsewang Norbu 2008 in front of the Chinese embassy in Berlin

Tsewang Norbu (born July 1, 1949 - † August 28, 2018 ) was a German human and civil rights activist of Tibetan origin.

Life

Tsewang Norbu was born in the village of Sengeri, near the border with Bhutan , shortly before the Chinese People's Liberation Army invaded . Since his village was on the route of the Tibetan refugee stream, whose participants wanted to escape abroad after the Tibet uprising of March 10, 1959 and reported of atrocities by the Chinese People's Liberation Army, all the residents of his village fled as well. Ten-year-old Tsewang therefore left his Tibetan homeland with his family on foot via Bhutan for India . Until 1969 he attended school in Masuri, northern India . He then studied at St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi , where he completed his Bachelor of Arts with honors in 1973 . For the purpose of further academic instruction he came to Germany in 1973, where he first studied sociology and Tibetology at the Ruhr University Bochum , later at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and finally at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn .

Norbu worked for several years as a Tibet expert for the Bundestag member Petra Kelly and the MEP Eva Quistorp . In 1992 he went to the Heinrich Böll Foundation , where, in addition to his duties in environmental protection, non-violence and peace and conflict research, he became the coordinator of the civil rights committee for migrants and refugees. He conducted intensive dialogues with right-wing extremists in order to bring tolerance closer to them. In 1979 Norbu was also a founding member of the Tibet Initiative Germany and the Association of Tibetans in Germany. Tsewang Norbu gave a large number of lectures and published numerous political articles as well as radio reports for Radio Free Asia .

In 2013 Norbu was a co-founder of the political exile party "bod-rgyal-yongs-rang-btsan-lhan-tshogs" (བོད་ རྒྱལ་ ཡོངས་ རང་ བཙན་ ཚོགས ཚོགས National Independence Congress of Tibet ), which has been a candidate for the elections since 2016 posted.

As a politician in exile, Norbu organized events on the relationship between China and Tibet. Being in close contact with the Dalai Lama , he arranged talks and visits from German politicians and journalists. Later Tibet supporters included a. the Greens MP Petra Kelly , Federal Minister Christian Schwarz-Schilling , the two Hessian Prime Ministers Roland Koch and Volker Bouffier as well as the TV presenter Franz Alt .

Tsewang Norbu died in an accident in 2018. In her funeral speech for him, Bundestag Vice President Claudia Roth emphasized that he had basically ensured that the topic of the human rights situation in Tibet was even noticed by the German public.

Web links

Commons : Tsewang Norbu  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Self-immolations in Tibet. What drives monks into the flames. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . March 16, 2012, accessed July 1, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Dalai Lama illuminates Hesse. In: Deutschlandfunk . May 14, 2014, accessed July 1, 2020 .
  3. ↑ The first "Seed of a Future Tibet" - Tsewang Norbu "Tak-Go" in Memoriam (1949–2018). In: igfm-muenchen.de. August 26, 2018, accessed July 1, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b We mourn our colleague Tsewang Norbu. In: Heinrich Böll Foundation . August 28, 2018, accessed July 1, 2020 .
  5. ↑ tsewang norbu organizes the tibet protest. Tibetans - and not Chinese. In: The daily newspaper . August 9, 2008, accessed July 1, 2020 .
  6. ↑ In memory of Tsewang_Norbu. In: Tibet Initiative Germany . November 20, 2018, accessed July 1, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Klemens Ludwig: From farmer's son to world citizen. Memory of Tsewang Norbu (1949–2018). In: Focus on Tibet. Issue 1/2019, pp. 22-25.
  8. ↑ Thomas Weyrauch: The party landscape of East Asia. Longtai, Heuchelheim 2018, ISBN 978-3-938946-27-5 , p. 275 f.
  9. ^ New Party Fuels Debate on Tibet's Political Future. In: Radio Free Asia . February 22, 2013, accessed July 1, 2020 .
  10. ↑ The Chinese Cultural Revolution and Tibet. In: Deutsche Welle . May 10, 2016, accessed July 1, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Tsewang Norbu. Funeral speech by Claudia Roth. In: YouTube . November 23, 2018, accessed July 1, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Norbu, Tsewang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German human rights activists and civil rights activists of Tibetan origin
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1949
DATE OF DEATH August 28, 2018