By Phurbu Thinley
Dharamsala, June 17: Tibetans in Dharamsala today staged a “No Torch in Tibet” rally to protest against China’s decision to take the controversial Olympic torch through Tibet’s capital Lhasa on Saturday.
The protesters staged mocking skit of China’s crackdown on Tibetan demonstrators and rallied around the McLeod Ganj town here calling on China to keep the torch out of the Tibetan region. They shouted slogans – “Stop Killing in Tibet”, “Long Live the Dalai Lama”, “No Torch in Tibet” – and accused China of politicizing the torch relay to consolidate its “illegal” hold on Tibet.
“It is now clearly confirmed that granting Beijing the chance to host the 2008 Olympics has emboldened the communists to crack down even more savagely on dissenters and minorities in its illegally occupied nations, including Tibet, inner Mongolia and Xinjiang (East Turkistan”, the organisers, the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress (RTYC) and Regional Tibetan Women’s Association (RTWA), noted in their public statement.
Condemning the decision to take the torch in Lhasa, the groups maintained it was “against the historical fact of Tibet’s independence, against human rights situation inside Tibet, against the basic principle of Olympic Games and most importantly against the wishes of Tibetans in and outside Tibet”.
“The Olympic torch relay through Tibet has already been shrouded in secrecy,” RTWA president Kelsang Youdon told Phayul. “Its journey around the world has also been marred by protests wherever it went.”
“China’s now does not have the confidence of the Tibetan people to take the torch through Tibet as it wanted – its travel date has been postponed and the exact time schedule is still not confirmed and made public,” she said.
China on Monday scrapped its plans to take the torch through the restive Himalayan region for three days from Thursday. The Olympic torch had originally been scheduled to pass through a district south of Lhasa on June 19 before spending the following two days in the Tibetan capital.
The torch is now rescheduled to make a one-day stop in Tibet on Saturday, June 21, Chinese state media reported Monday, but with no mention of the time schedule.
The change to the Tibetan leg may have been prompted by concerns over “security abnormalities,” the South China Morning Post reported yesterday without elaborating, citing the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy. Widespread protests against Chinese rule broke out in the Himalayan region in March and the Communist government in Beijing reacted with brutal crackdown.
Tibetan Government-in-exile based in Dharamsala claim as many as 204 Tibetans were killed by Chinese troops and, more than 1000 injured and many more arrested during the crackdown.
“Our protest against their decision to carry it through Tibet will continue,” Kelsang asserts. “China must now understand that Tibetans in and outside Tibet will never accept the torch coming to Lhasa after what happened there,” Kelsang adds referring to violent crackdown by Chinese military troops on Tibetan demonstrators.
Also RTYC General Secretary Mr Ngawang Lobsang said “Tibetans in Tibet and in exile have all clearly demonstrated that we don’t want this torch to come to Tibet”. “And now human rights situation in Tibet is deteriorating day by day as Olympic Games are nearing and Chinese Communist Regime is violating the Olympic spirit more rampantly and there is no sign of improvements that they have promised before,” he adds.
“Recent protests in Tibet have shown that after more than 50 years of illegal occupation, Tibetans still resent Chinese government and do not accept their legitimacy to rule over Tibet,” TYC president Mr Tsewang Rinzin told a public gathering before rally proceeded from the Tsuglag Khang (Main Tibetan Temple) here this morning.
Accusing China of committing deliberate atrocities on Tibetans people, Mr Tsewang said, “With only a couple of months to go for the Olympic Games to begin in Beijing, Chinese authorities have once again turned Tibet into a big prison”.
Chinese government accuses supporters of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual and political leader, of trying to sabotage the Beijing Games. Despites the accusations, the Dalai Lama last week appealed to Tibetans not to disrupt the relay when it passes through Lhasa, saying the games are important for the Chinese.
