Students for a Free Tibet celebrates a big win

Earlier this month, Tsering Dickey, senior at Palo Alto High School and president of Students for a Free Tibet Bay Area, woke up to a message from SFT headquarters in New York that read: “THERMO FISHER JUST AGREED TO PULL OUT OF TIBET — HAPPY NEW YEAR!” Dickey, in complete disbelief, quickly went to Wall Street Journal to confirm the news — and there it was, a story about how Thermo Fisher, an American biotech company, declared that it would no longer sell DNA sample kits and forensic technology equipment in Tibet on Jan. 5. 

This event rang bells of celebration for Students for a Free Tibet, a global student organization focused on Tibetan rights and independence, as it has been protesting the use of DNA kits in Tibet for over a year. SFT chapters all across the world celebrated by officially closing their Thermo Fisher campaigns.

According to the report by the Human Rights Watch, the Chinese Communist Party has been taking DNA samples from many Tibetan people and using them without their consent for surveillance and “crime detection” systems. 

According to Axios.com, Thermo Fisher decided to stop selling the kits due to “criticism from rights groups and pressure from Congress.” The company did not directly cite the involvement of the Chinese government.

SFT’s campaign spanned across multiple chapters, but Dickey details what the student members’ activism entailed. 

“We’ve talked to shareholders of the company and tried to get in on the shareholder meetings,” Dickey said. “We also did a few protests in San Francisco.”

Dickey recalls a large challenge she and other members faced during the campaign due to their ages.

“A lot of organizations and NGOs that we reach out to sometimes don’t necessarily take us as seriously because we are students,” Dickey said. “So we have to work twice as hard to get the recognition and twice as hard to get on the table to have a voice.”

After Thermo Fisher’s announcement, SFT has officially closed its Thermo Fisher awareness campaign. Dickey explains that SFT’s next campaign will be focused on colonial boarding schools in Tibet and other ways students can get involved. 

“Next up, I believe, is the colonial boarding schools inside of Tibet — we’re going to do a few events regarding that,” Dickey said. “We also have a huge protest coming up on March 10. It’s Tibetan uprising day, and there’s always a huge protest in San Francisco.”

Dickey explains how Thermo Fisher’s decision to withdraw from Tibet affected her perspective on the impact of student activism by serving as motivation to continue her advocacy work. 

“I want to say that it does happen,” Dickey said. “Even though it takes years, months, however long, it does happen, and you can make change happen.”