Marchers Arrested

Yesterday morning at 6:30am, my phone rang and before I reached for it, I knew what the call was about. The marchers had been arrested. Friends on the frontline were calling with details of how Indian police were forcibly removing the marchers one by one and placing them on buses. The marchers non-violently resisted by sitting down, linking arms and chanting prayers. I raced to the office only to find that there was no internet service. There was no service anywhere in town – coincidence or conspiracy theory? Despite the major set back, we managed to get out a press release and photos from our roving photographer.

The international media coverage throughout the day was mind-blowing. Everyone covered the story. It has been some of the best coverage of the Tibet issue that any of us have ever seen! (Check the links on the side for some examples of the stories filed.) In the evening, the marchers were taken before the district magistrate and were sentenced to 14 days detention for nothing more than peacefully walking along the road. At least their being put up in a government-run guest house!! It’s like the Indian government doesn’t really want to harm the marchers, but that they are under a lot of pressure from China to shut down the March. They must really want to stop it: at the end of the day, we received news that there were checkpoints set up around Dharamsala with police looking for protesters. Wow.

And amidst all the developments with the march, news keeps coming out about more protests in Tibet. From Lhadon’s blog:

Unprecedented protests continue for a third day inside Tibet and are getting so much attention that even the Chinese have to admit they are happening. The Times Online describes the authorities laying “siege to at least three monasteries in Tibet today, leaving monks trapped with dwindling food supplies, as the biggest anti-Chinese demonstrations in nearly two decades intensified.” The Guardian reports monks “on hunger strike as protests spread” and the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed piece describing this week’s global protests as “a timely reminder that China’s rights violations aren’t likely to go away any time soon.” Even as I write this RFA is reporting a new story about “Tibetan monks in critical condition after attempted suicide.”

China has even sent in tanks to shut down one of the monasteries where protests have been held. It normally tries so hard to hide the fact that they are oppressing the Tibetan people, but China’s brutality has once again become so blatantly obvious. So much for apolitical Olympics!