Is there such thing as freedom online?

Today is Amnesty International's Day of Protest against internet censorship in China. If I managed to program the code properly, you should have seen censorship on this page when you first accessed it.

You may have also noticed a green box towards the bottom of this blog. It is another Amnesty campaign giving snippets of blogs that have been censored by governments around the world. The more I write about politics on this blog, the more I wonder where in the world people would be blocked from viewing my site.

My friend Owen is doing his masters and is studying (broadly) how internet and anthropology interconnect. The other day he was talking about blogging and how it creates an online profile of the blogger that will forever be floating out there on the web. It reminded me how people such as myself try to hide their actual profile online. I thought that by only using my first name, my blog wouldn't be traceable back to myself. However, Owen showed me that it's not true.

So am I incriminating myself by blogging? By merely expressing my views and some episodes from my life, am I restricting what county I can enter or what job I can get? It may not matter now when I still believe what I have written, but what about 20 years down the road when I am less naive and idealistic? If I am worried about this, am I really free to post whatever I want online?

I definitely don't feel free in the content I post. Even if I change people's names and avoid mentioning locations, I feel that readers who are familiar with the Tibet movement or what I am doing would be able to figure it out. Once and a while I take that risk because the experience was too good not to share, like my talk with Tenzin, the TIbetan freedom fighter.

There are some things that I do which are only known to a few people (like maintaining the website for the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement). So if I write about those things, I can't hide who I am. If I write about the TPUM site or an experience related to it, some readers are going to know my true identity because they know I am working on that website. But if I change the name of the site in a blog post (say, that I am working on a site about expensive shoes), doesn't that take away half the meaning of the experience... as well as my reasons for doing that work in the first place?

I can't write about half the things I do because it would completely jeopardize the campaign or action I'm working on. That is, if I'm pompous enough to assume that the Chinese government or various legal/immigration agencies are actually paying attention to some random blog. But why take that risk?

So I guess this rant is a bit of a disclaimer: silence on my blog means I'm doing something cool that I can't tell you about now! Maybe I'll have to publish memoirs of a crazy activist somewhere down the line ;)

Dharamsala

Dharamsala evokes in me the same feelings that the chalet I visited as a kid used to. We used to go up to the cabin in the Rocky Mountains in Canada once a month growing up. It was a German-style A-frame cabin, with no electricity or running water. To get there, we had to drive 12 kilometers up an abandoned logging road, and then hike or ski 2.5 kilometers to the chalet. I always felt a sense of anticipation going up there, looking forward to being reunited with an amazing community of friends and a sense of being at home.

I have the same feelings returning to Dharamsala after being away. And my most recent return was even more powerful since I knew my friends from the March would also be returning.

I was always sad leaving the chalet. Even though I knew those people would always be there for me, and that I would eventually see them again, I hated leaving behind that sense of community. Unfortunately, we don’t visit the chalet anymore and my childhood community is scattered. I haven’t talked to some of my “aunts” and “uncles” in years. But they will always be with me, in my thoughts and in my heart, because they were such an important part of my life.

Just like leaving the chalet, when ever I leave Dharamsala, I’m overcome with an intense longing to go back again soon. Leaving this time was harder than ever before. This will be my longest break from Dharamsala since I first visited. But I have also gradually realized the fluid nature of the town – people will constantly be coming and going. A lot had changed over the course of the March. Some of my friends went home to the west and I made some new friends. Before I return, more friends will be leaving. My group of friends will never be the same as it was when I first arrived. But like the community at the chalet, I know these friends will always be with me.

I try to remind myself that impermanence is a part of life. But I still can’t wait to get back to Dharamsala.