Tibet is not Xizang: SFT Announces 13th Protest Against Guimet Museum

By Tenzin Chokyi

DHARAMSALA, 16 Dec: Students for a Free Tibet France is set to stage another protest against the Guimet Museum on Wednesday, 18 December, in front of the museum, SFT France announced on its Instagram page on Thursday. 

The protest on Wednesday will be the 13th in a series of protests against Musée Guimet for replacing the name “Tibet” with “Himalayan world” in the section of the exhibition previously labelled as “Nepal-Tibet.” 

A group of 20 Tibetologists and sinologists, in an open letter, condemned the name changes in two French museums, which also pointed to a broader pattern of French institutions ignoring human rights abuses committed by the CCP in return for China’s goodwill and economic collaboration, as reported by Le Monde on 3rd September.

Musée du Quai Branly, one of two French museums that changed the name “Tibet” to “Xizang,” restored the name “Tibet” within three weeks, following protests from Tibetans living in France organised by SFT France. 

In a press release issued after representatives from six Tibetan advocacy groups met with the museum’s representative Mr Clemens Tougeron in late September, it was stated that “the museum expressed sincere apologies and fully acknowledged the oversight in its recent exhibit. It recognises the strong political implications of the issues currently unfolding in Tibet and deeply regrets any missteps that may have occurred.”

Musée Guimet has defended the name change under the euphemism of “broader reflection” and claimed that the change was not to erase the word “Tibet” but rather to “make the cultural coherence of certain Asian spaces clearer and more comprehensible to non-specialists.”

Tibet advocates see the move as aligning with China’s politics of nomenclature to erase the distinct identities and cultural history of Nepal and Tibet and to avoid projecting Tibet as a separate state. In October 2023, China erased the name “Tibet” from all Chinese official documents.

The name changes at Musée Guimet occurred coincidentally just before its celebration of the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between France and China in May 2024 when Xi Jinping visited France.

Xi’s visit also marked the beginning of the Franco-Chinese Year of Cultural Tourism, a part of the “Roadmap for Influence” project under the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The cultural partnership has collaboratively planned 200 cultural events in France and China in 2024, where both countries will promote each other.

Tsering Shakya, a renowned scholar on modern Tibet and its relationship with China, expressed that the name changes mirror the colonial practice of renaming territories to assert dominance and to erase indigenous identities and histories. He further stated that the effort aims to subsume Tibetan identity within a Han-centric narrative to erase the region’s distinct culture and history and to marginalise Tibetan voices, their heritage, and their sovereignty.

“Tibet” encompasses the broader cultural and civilisational understanding of Tibet, which geographically includes the three Traditional Provinces of Tibet: Ü-Tsang, Amdo, and Kham. Meanwhile, the term “Xizang,” being widely pushed by China, only connotes the western region (Ü-Tsang) of Tibet, which was established as an autonomous region in 1965 by the Chinese government. This region, named the Xizang Autonomous Region, is now considered by China as equivalent to the name “Tibet.”

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