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Chemi Lhamo had barely claimed victory last week as student-union president at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus when it began: first a petition demanding she be removed from the post, then a torrent of online abuse.

The calls came from what appeared to be Chinese students, insisting her long-standing advocacy for Tibetan independence was “irrational” and made her ineligible to represent the student body.

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Some simply wished for her to die or be raped.

“People like u deserve a gunshot. Hope you go to hell immediately,” said a poster named caesssar_hsu on Instagram.

“Why we elect a person who don’t love her own country,” asked Ziyu Wang, one of almost 11,000 petition signers, though Lhamo is Canadian.

Meanwhile, in nearby Hamilton, a coalition of Chinese students’ groups protested a talk Monday at McMaster University about well-documented human-rights abuses against China’s Uyghur minority.