LUCKNOW, India — For the past half-century refugee Mingmar Bhuti, who fled Tibet as a teenager after China put down an uprising against its rule, has mourned the separation from her homeland and her family.
Bhuti, one of 137 Tibetans marching across India to garner sympathy for their plea for independence for their troubled homeland, says those wounds can only be mended once Tibet is free and her Indian-born children can visit.
“I yearned to meet my mother. I wanted to go back to Tibet. I could not meet her — she died two years ago. Today I just have memories,” said Bhuti, 63, who escaped over the Himalayas to India in 1959, leaving her widowed mother behind.
“I hope one day my children will go back to the land of their grandparents.”
The Tibetan exiles, who set off from the Indian capital New Delhi on April 9, are walking to Bodh Gaya, the spot where Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment 2,500 years ago.
Wearing masks on their mouths saying “Free Tibet” and carrying posters urging a boycott of the August Olympics in Beijing, the marchers perform skits about what they say is the “brutality” of Chinese forces in Tibet for onlookers.
“We stop to interact with people, give them our pamphlets,” Penpa Tsering, a senior leader of the pro-independence Tibetan Youth Congress group that is spearheading the march, told AFP by telephone.
“People must know the brutality unleashed on us by Chinese government.”
The exiles are now more than halfway through their 1,000-kilometre (600 mile) trek to the revered Buddhist site in eastern Bihar state, visited by some 100,000 pilgrims and tourists each year.
“The public response has generally been very good,” said Tsering, from Gosainganj, about 27 kilometres from Lucknow, capital of northern Uttar Pradesh state.
“I receive many calls daily from Tibetan sympathisers. They cry while talking and ask what they can do. I tell them, ‘Tibet’s freedom needs your support’.”
Indians along the way have bought cold drinks and snacks for the marchers who include at least 80 Buddhist monks, he added.
Some of the monks on the march double as cooks, whipping up steamed white-flour cakes and salted rice pudding for the demonstrators.
India has banned “anti-China” activities on its soil and blanketed its capital with thousands of police last month to prevent Tibetans from disrupting the New Delhi leg of the Olympic torch relay.
But it has made no move to halt the marchers, as they wend their way through India in searing plus 40-degree Celsius (101-degree Fahrenheit) heat.
However Indian olice stopped another set of marchers, who set off from the northern hill town of Dharamshala in March with a more ambitious plan to cross into Tibet.
Tibet saw deadly riots erupt on March 14, just a few days after the anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s escape to India in the wake of a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.
China launched a crackdown on the protesters and has since tightly restricted access to Tibet.
The Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamshala says 203 Tibetans have been killed and about 1,000 hurt in the Chinese crackdown on the latest unrest. China says Tibetan “rioters” and “insurgents” killed 21 people.
Envoys of the Dalai Lama met with Chinese officials in southern China on Sunday for their first talks in more than a year following global pressure on Beijing to reopen talks amid seven weeks of deadly unrest in Tibet.
The talks led to no breakthrough other than a pledge to meet for discussions on Tibet again.
