Tibetans' rage

By Kwanwoo Jun

     THE UNITED NATIONS, New York - Ear-ripping “Shame-on-China” chants blared from a loud speaker right outside the United Nations compound in New York Wednesday when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was addressing the annual UN assembly meeting.

About 100 protesters, mostly Tibetans carrying colorful flags and shouting anti-Chinese slogans via the trembling black rectangular speaker, fumed at China’s increasingly coercive rule of their plateau homeland north of the Himalayas.

“Shame on China! China, China out of Tibet! Human rights in Tibet!” they chanted during a rally held at Dag Hammerskjold Plaza on 47^th Street and First Avenue next to the UN compound in New York.

Chinese authorities have recently intensified crackdowns on Tibetan writers, artists and intellectuals critical of Beijing, with those who discuss situations in Tibet by e-mail or phone with the outside world facing arrest or harsh jail terms, they said.

Unrest has never ceased in Tibet since Tibetans staged a failed 1959 uprising, which resulted in a government-in-exile under Tibet’s spiritual leader Dalai Lama in India.

A Chinese crackdown on unrest in Tibet in March this year resulted in about 100 reported deaths, according to Reuters international newswire service, with the fate of 1,000 people still unaccounted for after unrest in 2009.

Tibet declared its independence in 1912, but China has ruled the region since its invasion in 1951 saying Tibet has been part of China since centuries ago.

Wen and other Chinese leaders say that Tibetans do have their human rights and freedom and that their lives improve under Beijing’s rule in Tibet.
      But Tibetan pro-independence activists, including Tenzin Dolkar, 25, say Beijing glosses over its brutality.

“He (Wen), being China’s top spin doctor, is here…trying to spin lies about the reality inside Tibet,” said Dolkar, a Tibetan exile and USA director of the Students for a Free Tibet that was among the groups organizing the protest rally near the United Nations building.

“No amount of spin can hide the true reality of China’s brutal occupation in Tibet,” she said in a high-pitched voice amid roaring chants by her fellow protesters.

Dolkar said tons of human right abuses by the Chinese government exist in Tibet. Stories of torturing a detained Tibetan dissident for 30 consecutive days in the Chinese prison cells or raping Tibetan nuns were just part of it, she said.

Dolkar has her own story too: Her entire family, including grand parents, escaped from the Chinese oppression in Tibet. Stripped of the family-owned land, they fled their homeland across the Himalayas to first India and then the United States.

Born in a refugee camp in India, Dolkar has never traveled to Tibet.

She knows it will not be easy for her, blacklisted and followed by Beijing for her activities, to have any luck to travel around her motherland Tibet freely in the near future.

But she does not just give up her hope: “I’m doing something for my country now in exile. I hope to do something for my country inside Tibet when it’s free.”

The protest drew also non-Tibetan US citizens. Among them was Walker Tovin, 14 of Dobbs Ferry, NY, who was an intern at the Tibetan activist group of a Free Tibet during the summer. He praised President Barack Obama’s meeting with Dalai Lama in February despite Beijing’s protest.

    “It was a step in the right direction for sure,” Tovin said. “But I feel like definitely there could be more pressure put on the Chinese government.”