Dharamsala calm as Chinese Premier arrives in India
By IANSWednesday, December 15, 2010
DHARAMSALA - Home to thousands of exiled Tibetans, ‘Little Tibet’ - uptown of this hill station in Himachal Pradesh - was peaceful Wednesday as Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in New Delhi on a three-day visit.
“No protests were held anywhere,” Superintendent of Police Daljeet Thakur told IANS.
He said most of the Tibetan exiles were staging a sit-in at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi.
“Our main protest is focused in New Delhi, where we planned to stage demonstrations and submit memoranda to various embassies to highlight the plight of people of Tibet and the issue of human rights violations,” Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) president Tsewang Rigzin said.
TYC is the largest Tibetan NGO working for the cause of Tibetan independence.
Activists of other Tibetan support groups like the Tibetan Women Association, the Students for Free Tibet, and the National Democratic Party of India are also camping in Delhi.
Hundreds of young and elderly Tibetans protested noisily in Delhi Wednesday demanding freedom for Tibet. They will be staging a sit-in near the Jantar Mantar observatory, built in th 18th century, during the entire trip of Wen.
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama too is not in Dhramsala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile. He is in Sikkim, where he is to attend various religious ceremonies and deliver a discourse.
The Dalai Lama fled Tibet along with many of his supporters in 1959 when Chinese troops occupied Lhasa and gthe rest of Tibet and took refuge here. Over 94,000 Tibetans live in India today.
