By Tendar Tsering
DHARAMSHALA, June 4: As the Dalai Lama’s three-day special teaching for Tibetan youths culminated yesterday with the conferment of Manjushri Empowerment (jamphel yang jenang), hundreds of Tibetan school and college students took part in peaceful rally for Tibet in the exile Tibetan headquarters of Dharamshala.
The rally was led by a group of school students from Tibetan Children’s Village School, Suja. The same group of around 160 students had earlier shaved their heads and sat on a 12-hour hunger fast in solidarity and support with the plight of people inside Tibet.
Following the rally, the students sat on a nightlong prayer service at the Tsug-la Khang temple, outside the residence of the Dalai Lama.
“We are organising the nightlong prayer service, coinciding with the 15th day of the Saka Dawa, for the lives lost in Tibet in the ongoing struggle for Tibet’s freedom,” Tsewang Thar, one of student leaders said.
Most of the children who participated in the series of campaigns, led voluntarily by the students during their summer holidays, are from Tibet.
Some of the students are also related to the young Tibetans who have self-immolated in Tibet in recent months demanding the return of the Dalai Lama from exile and freedom in Tibet.
Rinzin, 14, a young participant in the campaign said his father had been arrested by Chinese authorities in eastern Tibet. With very little information on the whereabouts and wellbeing of his father, Rinzin said he is constantly worried.
The school students had also held a painting exhibition, expressing in art, their first hand experience of living under Chinese occupation and repression.
“Not all feelings can be expressed in words, sometimes, feelings are expressed best through paintings,” one of the students had earlier told Phayul.
The ongoing fiery wave of self-immolations in Tibet has witnessed 38 Tibetans set their bodies on fire.
In the latest incidents of self-immolations, two young Tibetans had set themselves on fire in front of the Jokhang temple in the heart of the Lhasa, Tibet’s capital on Sunday. Three days later, a mother of three young children, passed away in her self-immolation protest in Zamthang eastern Tibet.
