MARY LYNN SMITH
Before the sun rises Thursday in St. Paul, Jigme Ugen and other Minnesota Tibetans will board buses for the streets of Chicago, where they will join other Tibetans protesting the Chinese government and visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao.
A group of Chinese-Americans will likely also line up outside the Chicago Hilton, in support of Hu.
Ugen, president of the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress of Minnesota, said his group’s protests are rooted in a commitment to the thousands of Tibetans who have been killed and imprisoned since China invaded the country in 1949. It’s a vow to get their country, culture and religion back, said 38-year-old Ugen, who was involved in protests before he could walk or talk. Growing up in India, he was carried by his father during those early protests; Ugen now protests hand-in-hand with his 7-year-old American-born daughter.
“Chinese President Hu Jintao has tried — and failed — to convince the world that China is open and democratic,” Ugen said. “His ultra-violent rule in Tibet, and the abuses committed against the Chinese people, show that in fact China remains an unchanged, repressive and authoritarian state.”
A contingent of Tibetans from the Twin Cities, the nation’s second-largest Tibetan community, treks to Chicago each year to protest outside the Chinese consulate in Chicago on March 10 in memory of a 1959 uprising that sparked the killing of thousands of Tibetans, Ugen said. “We usually scream, shout and lose our voices … outside an empty consulate,” he said. “But [on Thursday], Beijing is coming to Chicago.”
Change will come to Tibet eventually, he said. “The Berlin wall fell. The U.S.S.R. fell,” he said. “That’s reason enough to hope. Tibetans are holding strong.”
