Kiri Westby: Activism, Anger, Fear & Meditation

VividLife Radio’s Ed and Deb Shapiro welcome Activist Kiri Westby, to discuss her terrifying experience being arrested and tortured by the Chinese government and how Meditation helped her move through the aftermath. 

 

Kiri Westby has been traveling the globe since the age of 5 and working professionally in the human rights field since she was 21, focusing intently on the plight of women and girls in war zones.

 

Kiri worked for Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights (UAF) from 2000-2005. Her work with UAF focused on supporting the needs of women’s groups in situations of armed conflict, with regular travel to countries embroiled in civil war, armed secessionist movements, massive humanitarian and refugee crises and post-conflict reconstruction efforts (including Nepal, Sri Lanka, Aceh, Colombia, Uganda, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo). . 

 

In 2007, Kiri traveled to Tibet as an undercover activist on behalf of Students for a Free Tibet, hoping to use non-violent direct action tactics to expose the horrors of the Tibetan occupation by the Chinese government. Kiri and her colleagues were arrested, disappeared and tortured, emerging after 3 terrifying days in Chinese detention under intense interrogation. Kiri’s protest in Tibet was covered by CNN, BBC, Reuters, Associated Press among others, and members of the US Congress spoke out demanding her release. 

 

More recently, Kiri is a new mom who has been writing and blogging her experiences on some of the most widely read Internet newspapers, including Huffington Post, Care2.com and Vividlife.me. She is also a contributor to intent.org and elephantjournal.com