Tsezung Kyab Offered His Life For Tibet’s True Cause
Image:phayul
Breaking reports of a Tibetan who today self-immolated in protested at China’s illegal and brutal occupation of Tibet.Mr Tsezung Kyab, 27self-immolated at Shitsang Monastery in Luchu in Amdo region of occupied Tibet He died following his protest at the same location where his where his cousin, Pema Dorje died following an earlier self-immolation in December 8, 2012.
Image: tsheringsherpa
When Tibetans engage in justified and legitimate protests at the apathy and cynical inaction of the United Nations, which offers platitudes as China terrorizes Tibet’s people, it would be hoped that their right to dissent and peaceful demonstration would be respected. Not, sadly in Nepal, a nation that has allied itself with China’s regime to such an extent it seizes any opportunity to abuse, oppress and intimidate the Tibetan community living there.
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March 18, 2012 Malho in occupied Tibet’s eastern region of Amdo a massive protest against China’s tyranny, with Tibetans demanding independence for Tibet and calling for the return of the Dalai Lama.China’s paramilitary hard earlier made some arrests, an action which resulted in an estimated two thousand Tibetan laying siege to the nearby Chinese police center. The building was stormed and the arrested Tibetans released. We await reports of the inevitable violent crackdown by China’s body-armored thugs. Appreciation to Dossier-Tibet
Image:rtycrohini
Today under the leadership of RTYC Rohini and Samye Ling, Delhi Tibetan people staged a protest at UN Information Centre, New Delhi in solidarity with the people in Tibet and in support of the three Tibetans who are on indefinite hunger strike at UN headquarter in New York to draw the attention of the United Nations to the tense situation inside Tibet and take some concrete steps to address genuine problems of Tibet. There were around two hundred people gathered at the main gate shouting slogans like “UN: Tibet is burning, UN: we need your response and UN: we need justice”.
Image:rtycrohini
Some college young students tried to jump over the police barricades placed in front of the gate out of their frustration and even a boy stoned himself on head and blood ran like rivulet on his face. Most of the girls are tears in and the moving scene honestly expresses the growing frustration and impatience within the exile Tibetan Diaspora and specially among the young generation.
Image:rtycrohini
Three members of RTYC Delhi gave a petition letter to the chairman of the UN Information Centre to be sent to the general secretary of UN and asked the same person to convey their message to the UN chief. After shouting for almost two hours the crowd dispersed after singing the Tibetan national anthem.
Report and images courtesy of RTYC Rohini
Dharamsala – Activists with Students for a Free Tibet are planning rallies and actions in several cities, including Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Calcutta and Dharamsala, to protest the controversial decision by Censor Board of India to remove the Tibetan flag and ‘Free Tibet’ banners from the film Rockstar, which comes to theaters this Friday. In a shocking move by the Censor Board, director Imtiaz Ali was told to either delete or blur the visual of the flag.
“It is extremely disturbing that such a grotesque violation of free speech is occurring in the world’s largest democracy,” said Dorjee Tseten, National Director of Students for a Free Tibet India. “By caving in to Chinese pressure, the Censor Board is allowing China to threaten the freedom and liberties that Indians enjoy”.
“Tibetans are dying for freedom. In the last eight months, eleven Tibetans in Tibet have set themselves on fire in protest of Chinese rule,” said Dorjee Tseten.“At this critical time – when Tibetans are suffering so desperately under Chinese repression – one would expect India to be promoting and protecting the Tibetan people’s basic human rights, not censuring their struggle in a free country simply because China demands it be done.” Students for a Free Tibet is demanding that the Censor Board reverse its decision before the release of the film and Dorjee Tseten will be seeking a meeting with the Chief Executive Officer, Pankaja Thakur, this week.
Press statement/image courtesy of SFT Delhi
Image:slcfinest
Around fifty Tibetans and supporters marched through Salt Lake City Utah today in commemoration of the 1959 Lhasa Uprising against Chinese oppression and to honor and respect Tibetans inside Tibet who continue to resist the illegal occupation of Tibet. The procession made its way downtown, along State Street, past the City-County Building, past the Matheson Court House, and then returning up Main Street, carrying Tibet’s national flag and chanting, Free Tibet-Chinese Out.
A report from Radio Free Asia describes hundreds of Kham-Tibetans opposing gold mining at Ser Ngol Lo in Markham county, Chamdo prefecture, Kham.
According to the account “Chinese mining and Lumbering firm, Zhongkai Co, has been reportedly authorized to excavate the area where peaceful Tibetan protesters are facing armed Chinese security forces at the site”.
The protest that has been going on for several months has generated tension amidst more than “300 armed police presence” at the site and “the security forces have cut off the protesters from the rest of the village by blocking all phones and even cell phones.” A resident told RFA that the soldiers are ready to use force to move ahead with the mining project and the “Tibetans are vowing to risk their lives to resist it”.
Another local villager said, “Today another four vehicles with roughly 30 to 40 soldiers in them went to the protest site and we are not able to reach any of the protesters”.
Pema Thinley, vice chairman of the TAR [sic] Communist Party, was sent to Markham to to convince the local population, one of the protesters said. But residents continued their demonstration, and Pema Thinley was escorted back to Lhasa, the regional capital, on April 5.
Around 500 Tibetans blocked the road leading to the planned mine site by sleeping on the road day and night when a contingent of security forces arrived on the 15th of May, one of the residents said adding that “The Tibetans declared that they are ready to die to protect the sacred hill.”
Both the employee of Zhongkai Co and an official at the Markham county Public Security Bureau declined to comment on the mine or the protest, RFA said.
Thanks to RFA
As world leaders descend upon London in a desperate G20 effort to appear united in the face of the disintegration of free-market economics, Tibetans and their supporters have embarked upon a twenty-four hour ‘hunger’ strike outside the palatial oppulence of the appropriately named Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Where it is reported Chinese President Hu Jintao will be indulging his taste for decadent western delicacies during his UK visit.
Mandarin Hotel-Location of Protest Towards Chinese President Hu Jintao
Image: LondonBeats
The event is being promoted as a joint Tibetan-Chinese protest, not only in support of Tibet but to mark 20 years since the Tiananmen Massacre, the ongoing suppression of Falun Gong and to oppose the Chinese Communist Party will have wielded power for 60 years.
No doubt this collaboration would please the Dalai Lama, who during last year’s visit to the British capital was keen to encourage the development of what he hoped would become ‘Chinese-Tibetan friendship associations’. Given his government’s determination to accept Chinese rule and abandon any notion of independence, some have wondered if calls for greater contact between the two communities was part of a wider political effort, to appease Beijing and to soften Tibetan opinion, which remains deeply suspicious and hostile towards China.
Image: The Province
While recognizing the importance of the issues raised by the bloody massacre of Tiananmen Square and the oppression of religious sects within China, which rightly are the focus of political campaigns, it is hard not wonder what Tibetans inside Tibet would feel about today’s partnership on the streets of London. Since they are fighting for nothing less than independence for Tibet, and paying a terrible price for such dissent, could they feel any meaningful solidarity with an event which in all likelyhood will not feature Tibetan independence as its central objective.
Inside Tibet The Message is Clear-Amdo March 2008
Image: TCHRD
There will be an absence of any banner or literature supporting the political aspirations of the Tibetan people, instead the prime stated demand, published by the organisers, which includes the Tibetan Community in Britain, the Tibet Society (no friend of Tibetan independence) and Students for Free Tibet-UK, notes:
“China’s illegal occupation of Tibet must end now. The past 50 years of Chinese rule has seen the destruction of over 6,000 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and important learning centres; this has put the Tibetan national heritage and traditions at severe risk. China’s illegal invasion of Tibet in 1950 has resulted in the loss of over one million Tibetan lives. China must let Tibetan people govern their own homeland”.
Fine and agreeable sentiments of course, that all supporters of Tibet would agree with, but take a closer look, and once again no reference to the wishes of the Tibetan people, Tibetan independence is it would appear once more too hot to be included. Instead we have diluted and confused references to China permitting Tibetans the enjoyment of self-governance. In other words ‘autonomy’!
Who has responsbility for drafting these statements, is it the Tibetan Community in Britain, the Tibet Society or perhaps it’s authored by the exiled Tibetan Government, which in the face of widespread uprisings in Tibet demanding independence, is blindly following a course of appeasement aimed at accepting autonomy as a solution.
There are many Tibetans in Britain who are strongly supportive of Tibetan independence, some will be actively involved in this event, yet in agreeing to the aforementioned demands, and promoting such a message to the public, they are unwittingly misrepresenting the political goals of their compatriots inside Tibet.
The Tibetan people are not facing bullets, torture and prison for ‘autonomy’, or any other weakened form of self-government. They are standing up to such tyranny because they have one dream, a free and independent nation.
Surely Tibetans in Britain can support that goal?
Reports are emerging of a major protest in Ragya in which thousands of Tibetans have surrounded a Chinese police station, following the suicide of Tashi Sangpo. Video Available Here http://media.phayul.com/?av_id=148
According to the Voice of Tibet (VOT), the protesters broke into the station and removed the Tibetan national flag, which Chinese security troops allege was found in Tashi’s room. VOT radio, drawing upon local sources in the area, also reported that a convoy of military vehicles and additional security forces have arrived in Ragya from nearby Golok, with more troops seconded from Xining.
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