By Tenzin Choephel
Phayul Correspondent
Kathmandu, August 4: Over 500 Tibetans including men, women, monks and nuns left Kathmandu today to take part in the August 8 Tibetan Mass Movement in New Delhi, India.
Ms Chime, Executive member of Regional Tibetan Youth Congress (RTYC), Kathmandu, said that RTYC and volunteers have arranged buses that left today and confirmed that few more buses would leave tomorrow.
Mr Kalden from RTYC said that over 300 Tibetans had registered with RTYC and around 200 chose to go by themselves. He further said that there are probably many more who are going without their knowledge.
The regional chapter acknowledged receiving massive support from participants and also donations from Tibetan individuals and organizations, which made necessary arrangements, including making flags, and campaign banners and t-shirts possible.
Mr Sangpo, RTYC Jampaling, a Tibetan Settlement near Pokhara, while speaking to Phayul, confirmed that Tibetan people from the area had also shown tremendous support to the Movement.
According to him there would be large number of people coming from all the four Tibetan settlements of Pokhara along with Tibetans from as remote as Lo Tserok, a small Tibetan Settlement in remote trans-Himalayan Mustang District of Nepal, to participate in the massive campaign movement in India.
Phuntsok 59, a Tibetan pop singer is also joining the movement. “This is a great opportunity and right time to rise up and do something for our country and tell the people of the world about us” he said.
Phuntsok thinks, “sending a Tibetan National Flag to Beijing Olympics” is the most important job to do.
Another participant Tamchoe also has similar opinion and says he is ready to do anything for Tibet.
Of these Tibetans from Nepal leaving for New Delhi to take part in the movement, many of them are simply moved by the ongoing Indefinite Hunger Strike by 14 Tibetans in New Delhi that began on July 8. There are others who said they are going to support and express their solidarity with the hunger strikers.
The organising leaders of Tibetan Mass Movement have said that they would build up what is supposedly to become the biggest Tibetan demonstration staged so far since 1959.
Tibetans from all over India, Nepal and as far as US are pouring into New Delhi as organisers expect more than 10, 000 Tibetans to make up a massive campaign movement beginning August 8.
The Tibetan Youth Congress is undertaking these protests with a five-point demands, which include seeking concrete evidence from China on the whereabouts and safety of Gendun Choekyi Nyima, the 11th Panchen Lama recognized by the Dalai Lama who went missing since 1995, and demanding the Chinese Government and the IOC to produce sufficient proof that the human rights situation in Tibet is acceptable and that Tibetans are actually enjoying their rights.
On the 8th of August, with only a year left before the 2008 Olympic Games begin in China, other prominent Tibetan organisations and worldwide Tibet Support Groups would also be staging a series of intensive protest demonstrations in New Delhi and elsewhere to mark International Day of Action for Tibet.
