'China is your daddy': Backlash against Tibetan student's election prompts questions about foreign influenceWhat might otherwise be the usual mudslinging around a student election has turned into a political firestorm on a Toronto university campus, where a newly-elected student president is raising questions about the source of pro-China attacks against her.
On Saturday morning, Chemi Lhamo, 22, learned she'd been elected student president at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus (UTSC).
By noon, her phone was buzzing incessantly with notifications. But instead of messages of congratulations, Lhamo — a Canadian citizen of Tibetan origin — realized a photo she'd posted on Instagram for the Lunar New Year was attracting thousands of hateful comments, most rife with anti-Tibet sentiment, some threatening.
"China is your daddy — you better know this," read one comment.
...The onslaught of hate also has Lhamo questioning whether larger forces might be behind the harassment.
That's something Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former senior CSIS official for the Asia-Pacific region, said would be entirely consistent with what he observed during his 40 years in the intelligence service.
"I would have expected such a thing ... particularly because she's a young woman who has been actively involved in her circle of free Tibet," said Juneau-Katsuya, acknowledging he didn't have definitive proof of foreign influence in Lhamo's case.
Lhamo's participation in groups supportive of Tibetan independence from China would have made her a threat in the eyes of the Chinese intelligence services, Juneau-Katsuya said.
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