DHARAMSHALA, March 13: Twenty women belonging to the regional Tibetan youth congress Delhi were arrested and later released for carrying out a protest outside the Chinese Embassy on Wednesday, the 55th Tibetan women’s uprising day.
The twenty students of Delhi University including an Indian painted their faces with colors of the Tibetan National Flag, held placards and raised slogans for freedom in Tibet and demanded international intervention in the Tibet issue.
“It was difficult for us to leave the hostel this morning because of the police’s presence there at the hostel gate. However, we managed to sneak out in groups of two or three,” said Ngawang, Media and Public Relations Coordinator of Rohini Regional Tibetan Youth Congress. The twenty students, she said, symbolized the twenty Tibetan women who have self immolated in Tibet since 2009.
The protest, Ngawang said, was carried out to raise the voices of 127 self-immolators in Tibet and demand that the Chinese government must positively respond to their aspirations including the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet.
The twenty women also demanded the release of all Tibetans political prisoners, allowing of international media inside Tibet and to stop Chinese influx into Tibet where the Tibetans themselves have been marginalized.
Since 2009, 127 Tibetans including 20 Tibetan women have set themselves on fire in Tibet to protest against China’s occupation of Tibet and its hard-line policies.
“I felt I was a Tibetan myself and going through all the trauma and pain of being deprived the basic right to survive in my own country. I realized that our protest today was to question the violation of human rights in Tibet. We must stand up for Tibet and failing to do so is failing of basic human rights,” said Lavanya Joshi, a student at Miranda House college and the only Indian who participated in the protest.
On March 12, 1959, thousands of Tibetan women gathered in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, peacefully protesting China’s occupation of Tibet. Chinese authorities responded by restoring to brute force, resulting in the deaths, torture, and arrests of a large number of Tibetan women.
