(Originally published in VIVA: Jordan/UAE Leisure Magazine,  February 2007.)

No leg room, but a partial view afforded me a glimpse of the scenic splendour which greeted me in Tibet. Mouth agape, I peered with awe out of the scratched window as snow-capped peaks succumbed to naked brown mountains, an imposing behemoth that swallowed the aircraft which the pilot deftly manoeuvred to a safe landing within the belly of the beast.

Upon disembarking, I was instantly blinded by a glaring sun that ricocheted off the pervasive mountain range. It was unexpectedly hot and my body registered confusion, having just endured several months of rainy, bone-chilling climate that seemed to shadow me throughout my mainland China excursion. I gasped for air as the lofty elevation (at 3,650 metres, Lhasa is one of the highest cities in the world) assaulted my respiratory system, a surprise despite forewarnings… Lighting a cigarette in rebellion, I drew a deep breath and promptly choked. Not so good, I realised. Altitude sickness symptoms persisted throughout the first night – insomnia, shortness of breath, headache and a dry, relentless cough – and I discovered upon awaking the next morning that my body had fully succumbed to the malady.

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Will the forced sterilization of Tibetan women result in the end of the race?  This is but one of the serious questions examined by Suzan Crane in this report about the grotesque violations of women’s rights in Tibet.(Originally published in Untamed Travel, September 2005)

You don’t have to be as politically aware as Richard Gere to be unsurprised by the most recent U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2004 which found that Chinese authorities in Tibet “continued to commit serious human rights abuses.” Less well known and more shocking is the way that Tibetan women (girls of four and nuns of 40) are regularly wronged – sterilized, forced into prostitution and routinely abused on a daily basis.

In an oral statement delivered at the 61st Session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in April 2005, Dr. B. Tsering Yeshi, addressed these violations. Despite the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA), which affirmed women’s rights as an inalienable part of all human rights and fundamental freedoms, she asserted that “violence against women continues in its worst forms such as honour killings, genital mutilation and systematic rape of women… some endorsed and enforced by the state. Violence against women becomes a two-fold challenge when women are discriminated against because of their gender and race.”

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