“Diaspora” is a continuation of “An Exile.” That was about departure from Hong Kong and arrival in a new place. This focuses on the period after arrival.
Both are intended as sequel to the book, Liberate Hong Kong: Stories from the freedom struggle, which is about the 2019–2020 protests. That in turn follows As long as there is resistance, there is hope about the period from 2014 to 2018, and Umbrella: A Political Tale from Hong Kong about the 2014 Umbrella Movement.
“Diaspora” appears in installments. The previous installment was “Where have they all gone.”
The story below, “Past away,” may appear to have little to do with the Hong Kong diaspora, the ostensible focus of “Diaspora.” But the Hong Kong diaspora is hardly the only one, and because it is caused by a similar “push” factor—Chinese Communist Party oppression—it is related to the Tibetan diaspora. Also worth recalling is that, in many respects, the Hong Kong diaspora is not the least fortunate. The following story has a dream-like quality symbolic of the diaspora experiences of many, regardless of origin. While the exact nature of the impermeability of borders is different from person to person, Hong Kong exiles who cannot return will be able to identify with the insurmountable distance and the prospect of having a loved one die far away.
11. Past away
January 10
“Dear bro, my husband is past away from last Friday night.So me and my kids are in mourn.Actually our second interview will be on 12th Jan but I don't know how to do what to do right now.”
Did she say what I think she said? I ask for clarification. The next day:
“Dear bro, He past away last Friday.That night he told me that he got fever and took shower at 3am. Then i told him ,call Ambulance and go to Hospital.But he told these time covid luck down so if i take Ambulance.It will charge.Then told that alive is much an important than money but he didn.He wanted to sleep soon.Then next Saturday he was not available my calls and i i requested a woman.She is far from him.so she sent a guy to check him.Then he was no more.i did all prayers in most monasteries and what is needed to do for him in monasteries.i did. Tiday mor i arrived Delhi for urgent work.i will let you know latter.Don,t woorry about us.now thats all”
*
Her husband had gone to Austria years ago. She and their two young kids remained in India. The plan was this: he would get asylum and then bring the family over. I never heard how things stood with that, nor what he was doing in Austria—I assumed odd jobs. Due to his lack of education, he’d always struggled to make a living, ever since leaving Tibet. Even while he was in India, Khando earned more than he. She was a nurse, he part of that cohort of itinerant Tibetan sweater sellers who went up and down India from market to market, shifting with the changing seasons. A precarious way to get by even at the best of times.
Khando I’ve known for years. She was one of those kids who crossed the Himalayas as teenagers to get an education under the aegis of the Dalai Lama. We’ve always managed to keep in touch, no matter what, through many ups and downs. She’s best friends with a mutual friend who made the same trip. That one met a Frenchman who brought her to France and then left her. She’s now the single mother of a young daughter in a provincial French town. The three of us consider ourselves part of a family spread across three continents.
This is now the second historical phase of the Tibetan diaspora. Phase one was: escape from Chinese-occupied Tibet to India, where large communities of Tibetans took root. China sealed the border after the 2008 protests in Tibet. For years now, hardly any Tibetans have crossed into India. Phase two is: migrate from India to the rich world. Khando and her best friend have been part of both phases, but now Khando is stuck in India and her best friend, who made the leap, is abandoned in France. Together they represent the in-between-ness of the situation of the Tibetan diaspora in this historical moment, a time of change and uncertainty. The decades-long foothold of the Tibetan community in India, always welcome by the Indian government and people up to now, is beginning to look less secure, with the Dalai Lama getting ever closer to the end of this life and India now ruled by Hindu fundamentalists who stoke xenophobia.
*
I ask Khando to let us know if there is anything I can do to help. I’d be happy to send money, I tell her. I helped her through nursing school but it’s been ages since I last sent any funds—she’s managed to eke out a living of her own.
“Thank you bro.once happened bad things,its happenes more.what to do.After coming to excile community,i faced countless troubles but this was the worst one.”
January 18
“Hi bro.i am here with my kids.we did all the prayers almost all monasteries.Then we had an appointment Austrian Embassy in 12th Jan.It was given from previous month so we came as usual to give interview.But ,the person who are going to bring us to that country[’s consulate] is not there.Therefore,there will be very less chance to get Visa.So some of my country mates advised me to request them to give us Visa to see his deceased body.so we three have been along with our agency who worked those documents for us.We requested that reception lady to give Visa as it's last chance to see my husband or kids father before burn.But that Madam told us ,high aithority is in Austria,here we can' t do anything.She questioned me where I am staying now and what am I doing .At last,she told us that now you can leave ,wait for atleast two weeks. so we three are here in Delhi now.The head of Tibetan community in Austria wrote them to give chance to see deceased body as Tibetan Culture.But now also his body is there in hospital.We don't get any information and they also did not get any call till date.what to do bro.We took loan from others for pass port and reach there for better future for my kids.Then this happened with us.Now I don't know wether the country will give us Visa or not.My kids are going online classes through moble.My kids began their new section from yesterday so I bought all the books and their needs.They have only a month vacation from 20thFeb to March.So,now most of places are luck down and we stay savely in his country mate home.So don't worry for us.
That's all for now.
Your faithfully
Khando”
I ask again if she needs money.
“Hi bro,
This time my country mates and late husband's country mates are trying to help me with contribute their own capabilities . So my loans will be cleared soon.So don't worry about me.”
I press.
“Hi, bro.Right now I am ok.i don't need money ,if i need in future.i will beg help from you because now I can return back money which I took before from others.But I have to wait to collect money from those people who are helping for me.Most an important work is to get Visa to see his deceased body .Since it is last chance for us.if we can go there means achieved his goal also.Thank you .wish you all healthy and save.”
A day later:
“We all hope to get Visa but that country is little different from America or Canada.i think it might be difficult.Austrian head of Tibetan community concern a lots about it.He is trying to write some of their department.Thank you bro.Don't worry about me.My fate is like that only.i am so unlucky one.”
A week later:
“Still staying in Delhi with late husband’s countrymate
they are very good to us
No word from anyone, no news
Don’t know whether I’ll get a visa or not, turned in all the documents asked for at embassy on 22nd.”
Her husband’s body is still in the hospital. The head of the Tibetan community in Austria has asked it hold on to the body until Khando and the kids can claim it. She’s heard that in similar cases, the doctor wrote a letter to the Austrian government to corroborate the family’s story, but this hasn’t been done in her husband’s case.
*
Khando and her husband married a dozen years ago. It was about time she got married, and he, sweet, friendly, agreeable, seemed as good a candidate as the next guy. She was skeptical of his lack of worldliness and education. It hadn’t been too long since he’d come from Tibet. Unlike most Tibetans she knew in India, he’d had no education in exile—he was too old when he arrived. As someone who herself had come to India as a teenager with minimal prior education, she knew the ignorance and isolation from which he came.
When I last saw her a decade ago, she was working as a nurse at a boarding school for Tibetan children run by the Indian government. She’s still there all these years later. They have two kids, a 12-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy. Just recently, it’s been decided that the Central Tibetan Administration (commonly known as the government-in-exile) will take over the running of the school from the Indian government. All permanent employees will be kept on by the CTA, but those not on permanent contracts will be let go. Even though she’s worked there for more than a dozen years, Khando’s never been given a permanent contract. Since the school also provided her housing—a small room—, she’s soon out of a home as well. When she learned of her husband’s death abroad, she was already packing up her belongings. In the short term, she and her kids can stay with others. She’s heard that those who worked at the Indian-government-run Tibetan boarding school on non-permanent contracts can apply to CTA for their positions but will most likely have to go all the way to Dharamsala to do so. Then she hears that they are no longer accepting interviews there; instead, whether or not she is re-hired is left to the discretion of the school principal. It’s unclear when the new principal will make the determination on that.
*
Not long after they got married, her husband went to Austria, hardly the most likely destination for a Tibetan. He knew no German, or any language other than Tibetan—just a bit of English, a smattering of Hindi, enough to sell sweaters and make his way in the world. I don’t know how he got to Austria, nor his legal status there. Khando rarely mentioned him. All I knew was she thought going to Austria was the best way to give their kids a better life. Perhaps he recently legalized his status or even became a citizen or permanent resident, thus allowing Khando to apply for a visa to visit him there. I didn’t ask whether the visas for which they are applying are visitor’s or immigrant’s.
More than two weeks after their interview at the Austrian embassy in Delhi, they still haven’t received any response. The head of the Tibetan community in Austria is still helping.
“Bro,ya i think this must be main point but he told me that he wrote to the hospital.Then i don't know the main reason why we r not get.Maybe there is some other reason that we could not do right way .Now we three have to wait for the result wether it's good or bad about our Visa.These all happened to me as my fate.Now my kids became orphan like myself.They don't have father and i myself lost that job also.Tibetan settlement facilities are also not for us.Actually i am in a group of people who came from Tibet live in Uttrakhan.We tried to get Tibetan settlement in this state but our govt gave some people who could pay 15laks.So some of us yet to get that facilities as we couldn't pay or collect that amount of money.So now I am facing multiple problems.But i will wait here till get News from Austrian Embassy.Then i will decide latter
Take care of your health and wish you all the best.
God bless you all.
Khando.”
A week later:
“Dear bro,
I am happy to get your message.i have seen it this morning but I couldn't reply soon.
Ya bro,i will not get back my job because my job was on contractual base so our Central School for Tibetans under govt of India had already hand over our Tibetan govt.Therefore,there is lots of schools in Tibetan community and no one is coming from Tibet since 2008. Our community is facing problems with more schools and less number of students.Hence,most of schools are combined. So,the number of staff seat became very less and all the Sambota who are working under Tibet govt are permanent.They can work continues and we contractual staff under C.S.T. should relief that last day of hand over.Si i have no chance again to work there.”
February 7
“Hi bro,how about you all? If we could not go there,i have to look after my kids till end their winter vacation.Tibetan Homes will be having vacation till middle of March this year because our Tibetan Losar is late this year. After my kids admitted in school as usual in boarding then i have to search job.There is one vacancy in post of nurse in Kaling pur CST but almost all schools demend nurse from 25 to 35 age.So,it's much difficult for me to find.I will try, if there is any vacancy in monasteries.
The Tibetan community head of Austria try his best and last Friday i got mail from Austrian Embassy.They mentioned to mail exact date of funeral for the deceased and death Certificate.Hence,to get these things,we have to fix funeral date.Now it's too long to keep in Hospital, so they did not allow to keep beyond 15th Feb because i has been long period to keep there and that condition is not good to keep futhermore.Then head of Tibetan community,appeal those things from Hospital and sent to Delhi Embassy.Also,he wrote a bonafide letter to take all responsible for supporting expensive to trip there.These all sent to AE delhi but yet to answer wether we will get or not.If we didn't get before 15th of this month.Then there will be no chance through this way.So,now waiting for it bro.
These days most Tibetans reached abroad for better future for their kids as our community in India became worst and there might be problem even those who have Tibetan settlement.So they spend too much money for fake marriages and pay dollars to particular man or woman.After arrived there,every boday try to work hard and paying their debt.
For me really this year is black year,Family reunion became empty and my job has lost.All bad things happened my kids and me..i pray to God never happen such things to others.
That's all my situations.Sorry for long letter.
Take care of your health and best wishes.
Your faithful
Khando”
*
While they are waiting for a response from Austria on their visa applications, Khando and her kids have to remain in Delhi, staying with people who come from the same part of Tibet as her husband, his so-called “countrymates.”
“Here,Delhi Manjukati la area is small but too many people and full of bad odours.Here most people are doing business.Many of them are waiting for their Visa.These years people buy documents of another who have already citizens in abroad.Then they to there and paying huge amount of money after reaching destination.Here some people don't know how to write and read but they are very clever in every side.i really shocked to see such people.i spent my whole exile period in school as students and nurse,matron.So i feel like foolishness to deal in such society.”
Majnukatilla is the main Tibetan area in Delhi. I remember it well, a place to pass through on your way to somewhere else. Whereas there was a sovereign aspect to other Tibetan communities in India—places where they could live with dignity, have control over their own lives, and feel a sense of security—Majnukatilla was scrappy and gave a sense of the tenuousness of Tibetans’ sojourn in that country. They were a tiny drop in a nation of a billion; if the circumstances changed, they could be washed away just like that.
*
Her husband’s death seems so mysterious. He was a young man in supposedly good health. How could he die so suddenly? Of what exactly? Was there any medical determination of the cause of death?
February 9
“Hi bro,i have known about him was that, he dead with case of Heart failure.Thats only i came to know.That evening he did video to me and told me he got fever.He took shower at 3am and his nerves became tight.He could not stretch his legs or hands properly.So latter on he tried for minor exercise and went for walk three Km.All those happened that day and we talked through video call at 9 pm.He stoped with saying i will be alright,nothing will happen.You sleep well don't worry,that was last words”
February 14
(the day before her husband is scheduled to be cremated, with or without his family)
“Hi bro,i came here at branch of Austria Embassy to get online appointment but it's difficult.we came here 11.am and now it's 1.37pm.we got our number just now but they told us to fill up three forms for us.Per form cost Rs2300.Now my agency is filling these forms .i don't know wether we can get online appointment properly or not.Tomorrow,my husband funeral day it extended more than a month but they did not give proper notice”
“Hi bro,it is not sure wether we get or not because till now they did not do anything.Tomorrow will be the funeral of deceased body.If they did something with presence of deceased body there will be more chance to get.After tomorrow ,i think they might be change thier mind after funeral.whatever it is,today the cost of short term Visa is 22025 for three of us.i don't know how long we have to wait.”
For days, I can't get the image out of my head: her husband's corpse—“his deceased body”—alone day after day in the Austrian hospital, with nobody to claim it.
*
On February 15, Khando, without comment, sends a video. A monk is chanting while standing at a podium in a white room of the kind one might normally see in the municipal funeral facilities of a Western city—stark, spare, anonymous. Behind him are large panes of stained glass in a semi-circle, but it’s dark outside so no light comes through the glass, just blackness. There is a small, simple coffin to the monk’s left. It’s surrounded by dark red and white flowers and candles, some in lanterns. As the monk chants, the person recording the video narrates under his breath in Tibetan. I imagine this is the head of the Tibetan community in Austria, the one who’s been trying to help Khando. His camera pans the room. Altogether eight people are sitting in the pews arranged in front of the altar. All of them look Tibetan. Who are they? People her husband knew in life? Or are they, like the head of the Tibetan community in Austria, Tibetans who did not know him but want to pay their respects to a compatriot, for whom otherwise no one will mourn? No family is present. Khando’s husband’s family is in Tibet. Do they even know he has died? Khando and kids are in India. The funeral has taken place without her and the kids even receiving a response to their visa application.
*
Some time later, she’s informed their application was rejected on the grounds that they had stated in their asylum application that they intended to remain in Austria. I ask her about this. She says the agency handled it. But was it an asylum application? I ask. She isn’t altogether sure. And has the asylum application been handled, or will it still be? She is uncertain. Presumably, if the asylum application was based on the grounds of family reunion with her husband, now that he no longer exists on this earth, the application is null and void.
*
Khando’s story may seem to have little to do with the HK diaspora, but the Tibetan—and Uyghur—diasporas were created by the same force as HK’s—oppression at home by the Communist Party. Her story is like a fable about the impermeability of borders. If you have money, if you have the right passport, it is easier than ever before to travel internationally. For those without, borders appear so impassable it’s as if they separate one dimension from another.
Khando managed to escape her country, crossing over the highest mountains in the world as a teenager. But she could not go back and has not seen her family in more than two decades. After arriving in India from Tibet, young refugees like Khando would go years with very little contact with their families. Then, with the advent of the smart phone, suddenly they could speak with them every day. But in the last five years especially, the CCP has drastically increased surveillance, monitoring WeChat and phone calls, stopping people on the streets of Tibetan cities and towns and searching their phones, arresting people simply for being in touch with others abroad, essentially regarding any contact with the outside world as criminal. It’s become dangerous for people in Tibet to be in contact with anyone abroad. The exiles are cut off from their loved ones in Tibet. Then when Khando wants to go to Austria simply to be at her husband’s funeral, she and her children can’t get a visa. For Khando, the borders of both her own country and of the rich countries are impenetrable. Her husband’s death is surreal, just as every death of a loved one whose body cannot be seen or touched: it is hard to believe that it really occurred.
In 2015, I started writing a long story about a man in HK whose wife, a human rights defender, disappears in China. He has no way of finding her or even knowing for certain what has happened. He thinks she was abducted when she went looking for a friend who had disappeared. It’s almost certain both she and the friend have been detained by the authorities. He doesn’t dare to cross the border to look for her, not least of all because they have a young daughter, and he doesn't want to risk being disappeared himself, leaving the girl with nobody to take care of her. I finished the story at the end of 2016. Just a month before it was to be published, five HK booksellers were detained by the Communist Party. Three were in China, but one was kidnapped from Thailand and another from HK, both smuggled across borders into China. It was as if my story had come to life. Borders were permeable when a powerful regime wished to cross them, but not for those who wanted to rescue their victims, or for their victims who wanted to get out. One of those five booksellers, a Swedish citizen, is to this very day detained in China, seven years on.
The separation and despair at the root of my story was what I felt again when the booksellers were kidnapped, and when I think of the Tibetans who’ve fled their country, and now when I hear Khando’s story. It is what I feel when I think of the many HKers who cannot return to HK without risk of imprisonment, and of the HKers who wish to leave HK but cannot. The borders of HK have become impermeable for those who by right should be able to cross them most easily.
I think of a friend who made a desperate and arguably ill-informed request for help from the US consulate in HK and was rejected. This was around the time of the imposition of the NSL. He was not in prison right then; he’d been recently released and would be arrested again not too long after. Because he was facing various trials and was on bail, his passport had been confiscated, relinquishment of travel documents being a common condition of bail. Without the passport, it was unclear how he would be able to leave HK even if the US had consented to help him. Still, he felt he had to try. I only heard this story long after he’d been re-imprisoned. I hadn’t even known how much he wanted to leave HK. Now, whenever I think of him in prison, I recall his last-ditch appeal for help. The walls between us multiply.
I think, too, of the HK12. They were all arrested during the protests and had trials hanging over them. Out on bail and with passports confiscated, they resolved to hire a boat to spirit them away to Taiwan. They were caught by the Chinese coastguard and imprisoned in China. Eventually, they were transferred to HK and immediately imprisoned there. Most are still behind bars. None have publicly spoken about their ordeal. It’s uncertain if their stories will ever be heard.
And I think of five others who took the same trip, but managed to be rescued by the Taiwanese coastguard. Taiwan had initially been welcoming of HKers seeking to get away, but by this time, it was so wary of provoking the Communist Party that it kept the rescue hush-hush. The five were confined to a military base for a year before Taiwan and the US made arrangements for the latter to take them in.
I think of Ai Weiwei. He was asked what he would say to exiled HKers thinking of return. Ai responded, “I can’t answer for others and I think every individual has to make up their minds according to their circumstances. My situation is I have a mum who is 90 years old and she calls me all the time on the phone. She thinks I am her little boy. Always her last sentence before we say goodbye is, ‘Don’t come back.’ So, it’s very hard to answer a question like that. Of course, I would like to go back and see my mother, but she’s the one telling me not to return. There is a strong chance I may never be able to go home.”