New Delhi: In a recently released video, actor Richard Gere asks people to share and spread his message warning of the threat that China’s new Ethnic Unity and Progress Law poses.
“What if I told you another country thinks it should be able to punish me for making this video?” Gere starts. He agrees that while it sounds “impossible,” China is enacting a new law that allows people of any nation, religion, or community to be targeted for actions or words the Chinese Communist Party deems a threat.
“Most people think it’s about Tibet. But Tibet is where China tests ideas before expanding them and taking them elsewhere: surveillance, forced assimilation, erasing language, erasing religion. And now they are testing something even bigger than that. Can an authoritarian government convince the rest of the world to censor itself?” said the Pretty Woman (1990) actor.
He went on to add, “If you believe that your free speech should be protected by your government’s laws and constitution, not taken away by another country’s, share this.”
This comes after Gere, a Hollywood veteran and a dedicated student of the Dalai Lama, in a column for The Wall Street Journal last week wrote that the new law “should alarm every American.”
He went on to say that US leaders should recognise the law as “a declaration that Beijing’s ideological jurisdiction extends beyond its borders.”
“Tibet has long been treated as a distant concern. It isn’t. It is the place where the tools of modern authoritarian control were first developed and refined—tools now pointed outward,” the actor wrote.
“When Beijing moves to criminalise foreign criticism of its ethnic policies, it is testing whether the international community will accept the premise that no one, anywhere, may challenge the party’s preferred version of history. That is a test the U.S. can’t afford to fail.”
Gere has been a staunch advocate for the Tibetan independence movement and chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet, a non-profit advocacy group working to promote democratic freedoms for Tibetans and ensure their human rights.
In 2025, at the International Tibet Youth Forum in McLeodganj, Gere vowed to fight lifelong for Tibet’s cause and also criticised China for attempting to impose its will on the Tibetan people.