Schmidt / Bauer: Exile in Switzerland: Tibetans on the Run

How can one go on living when one’s homeland is no longer a homeland? What does it mean to flee and remain a refugee for the rest of one’s life? And how can one bear the fact that there is no going back to one’s own country? These questions weigh heavily on the minds of Tibetans who fled their homeland after its occupation. Fifty years after the popular uprising against the occupiers, twelve Tibetans tell the story of their escape for the first time. We learn how they grew up in their unoccupied homeland, experienced the Chinese invasion, fled at the risk of their lives, found their way to Switzerland, and built a new life for themselves— Men and women, farmers and nomads, merchants and monks who found themselves thrust from the silence of the Tibetan highlands into the midst of an industrialized, meritocratic society.