World Tibet Network News Tuesday, February 24, 1998

23 February 1998

International Campaign for Tibet - Washington, DC

Richard Gere, actor and Chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet, will participate at a pre-hearing press conference and testify before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights during their annual oversight hearing on refugee programs, Tuesday, February 24. Mr. Gere will speak, specifically, in support of continued U.S. Government humanitarian assistance to Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal and, more generally, of the need for increased U.S. funding of overseas refugee programs.

Mr. Gere is a regular traveler to Tibetan refugee settlements in India and traveled in December 1997 to Kathmandu, Nepal where he visited with new arrivals from Tibet. Approximately 3,000 Tibetans escape into freedom in exile each year, most of them crossing the Himalayas through Nepal to India. A significant number of new arrivals report a personal history of torture by Chinese authorities.

According to Mr. Gere: "Anyone familiar with the issue of Tibet understands that systematic human rights abuses, intensified control, cultural assimilation and resource exploitation have fundamentally changed the Tibetan way of life. To the extent that Tibetans can survive within these foreign and repressive Chinese-imposed paradigms, they remain in Tibet or they flee. What we are seeing this winter, is an increase in Tibetan refugees arriving in Nepal and India, and particularly an increase in the number of monks and nuns and children."

Mr. Gere is also announcing a program being launched on February 24 by the International Campaign for Tibet and WITNESS, a program of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, to provide interactive documentation of the 1998 winter exodus of refugees from Tibet. It can be accessed on and will showcase Tibetan refugee photographs and stories of why they fled and what they have endured crossing the Himalayas. The program will continue through March.