KATHMANDU – More than 5,000 Tibetans in Kathmandu publicly prayed for peace on the 45th anniversary of the uprising that sent the Dalai Lama into exile, defying a ban on Tibetan rallies in Nepal.
Monks and nuns offered prayers and held up placards reading “Free Tibet” as schoolchildren sang the anthems of both Tibet and Nepal in a predominantly Buddhist area of Kathmandu.
The Dalai Lama’s representative in Nepal, Wangchuk Tsering, laid a khada, a traditional white scarf, on a portrait of the Dalai Lama and told the crowd that Tibetans hoped 2004 would see “a significant breakthrough” with China.
Police did not intervene, but were deployed to prevent the procession from entering one of Kathmandu’s best-known monuments, Buddhanath, a towering Buddhist temple believed to date from the seventh century, witnesses said.
Nepal, which is careful not to antagonise its giant neighbour to the north, officially bars all Tibetan protests.
Some 35,000 Tibetans have moved to Nepal since the Dalai Lama fled Lhasa for India amid a failed uprising that erupted on March 10, 1959.
The Dalai Lama, in a message for the anniversary, called on China to prove to the world it was a “responsible” power by resolving the fate of Tibet through negotiations.
