Dharamsala, July 29 – Vice President of the Tibetan Youth Congress, Dhondup Dorjee, and Public Relations Secretary, Tenzin Yangdon, represented Tibet at the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY) festival 2009 held between July 15 to July 21 in Zanka, Hungary.
The 15th IUSY festival was hosted by IUSY member organisation Societas – New Movement which is a youth organisation of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), currently the larger coalition partner in the Government of Hungary. Hungarian Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai graced the concluding ceremony.
Over 3000 young socialists and social democrats from more than 143 different organisations from around the world gathered to attend a week of discussions, seminars, workshops and happenings under the slogan “Development for Freedom – Our war on Poverty”.
Dhondup Dorjee was among the five member panelists in the Asia pacific regional seminar on “The democracy in Asia” which was moderated by Ms Jacinda Ardern who is currently a Member of Parliament from New Zealand and the President of IUSY. Dorjee briefly summarised the situation inside Tibet since March 10 last year and the worsening situation there after the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
“The Communist Party of China, instead of addressing the genuine grievances of the Tibetan people, they resorted to brute use of force, tried to undermine the peoples’ movement by blaming His Holiness the Dalai Lama for the unrest, and most unfortunately China tried to project that the Tibetans are anti-Chinese in order to get the Han Chinese support for their crackdown on the peaceful movement,” Dhondup said.
He also highlighted the democratic process within the Tibetan community in exile for the past 50 years under the leadership of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the roles of TYC in further strengthening the democratization within the exile community. He said, “His Holiness the Dalai Lama is today regarded through out the world as an epitome of peace and non-violence but for the Tibetans, he is also a champion of democracy.”
TYC delegates met with the delegates and Vice-President Brando Benefei of ECOSY – Young European Socialists, the youth organisation of the Party of European Socialists (PES) and the Socialist Group in the European Parliament. Benefei expressed his organisation’s interest and concern for Tibet.
The two TYC delegates also participated in the Festival Expo-Bazaar where they did a photo exhibition of Tibetans in exile.
A week long festival with intensive political discussions gave an opportunity to exchange ideas and strengthen the global network of young people working for social democracy, fighting injustice, occupation and human rights violations. The five main conferences of the festival focused on Conflict Prevention, Migration, Climate Change, Economic Crisis and Poverty.
