Since its occupation of Tibet, the Chinese Communist Party has displaced and murdered tens of thousands of Tibetans with genocidal settler colonial policies. As refugees, Tibetan Americans have worked tirelessly to preserve their language and culture. But it’s a small community of about 26,700 people—and treachery inside it hits particularly hard.
Baimadajie Angwang, a now 33-year-old Tibetan American, traveled to the United States on a cultural-exchange visa when he was 17, which he then purposefully overstayed. He claimed that he would be tortured if he was forced to return to China. His name was a Sinicized version of the Tibetan original, Pema Dhargyal Ngawang, and he couldn’t speak Tibetan, but that’s not unknown for young Tibetans in China, the victims of policies designed to destroy their culture and language. Angwang was granted asylum, and eventually citizenship. He became a police officer, serving as a community liaison in New York, as well as a U.S. Army reservist.
