When I look back on that night and consider the extent to which Lhasang Tsering would shape the debate over Tibet’s future in the years that followed—a debate that shook the Tibetan exile community—I am struck by how quietly it all began.
In the preceding weeks, my task as a volunteer at the Tibet Office had been to enter corrections for the final printed version of the Strasbourg Declaration. And there were quite a few corrections. Kelsang Gyaltsen, then the Dalai Lama’s representative in Switzerland, had been charged with preparing the print of the declaration together with a small offset printing shop near the office, at Waffenplatz in Zurich. Before leaving for Geneva, I took a copy for myself. I can still vividly remember the elegant printing in pastel yellow. Kelsang Gyaltsen had chosen glossy paper.