TRANSCRIPT:
Tsering delivered his remarks to Washington’s National Press Club in October 2025.
Voice of America has played a very important role in not just talking about the Tibetan issue globally but then also about American values to the Tibetans inside Tibet. Of course there are a lot of jammings and all that, but despite all that, information does get through to Tibet.
Now after the defunding of RFA and Voice of America, people are feeling the void already. From within Tibet, we receive messages like — they can’t say directly — so they saying “we are missing our morning tea.” Those kind of messages are being sent from inside Tibet.
So we are still hoping that there would be some space for the funding of the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, which are very, very essential tools for information dissemination within Tibet.
Published
Tsering is the elected leader (Sikyong) of the Tibetan government-in-exile, also known as the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), headquartered in Dharamshala, India.