Jamyang Tenzin, a 64-year-old Tibetan man who lives in India, has been taking a long bicycle trip. So far, he has traveled 2,387 kilometers “to raise awareness over Tibetan issues and China’s occupation” (Asian News International, November 11, 2024).
“It is important for India and the Indian people to think about Tibet and this is my goal, to spread awareness”, Tenzin told ANI.
Tenzin said that he began his journey to spread awareness on September 27, which is marked as ‘Black Day’ by the Tibetan community.
He said, “In 1987, in the capital of Tibet, Lhasa, a massacre took place. Many lamas were killed there during a peace march and many young men and women were also killed”.
He said that in the context of the 37th anniversary of the massacre, he started his awareness drive to convey a message in India and the whole world on how “China is trying to destroy our Tibetan culture. It is trying to snatch away our children from parents, it is trying to snatch away young kids from the monasteries and sending them to China and erasing the culture”.
To help Indians focus on what China is doing to Tibet, Tenzin plans “to visit the entire India.”
The reference to how the CCP has been grabbing Tibetan kids “and sending them to China” may be confusing, since the Tibetan region is governed by China and is (currently) part of China. Many Tibetans, though, regard the Chinese party-state as only an occupying force, not a legitimate ruler of Tibet.
Some of the boarding schools to which the children are shipped are outside of Tibet; some are within Tibet but far from the children’s families.
In a 1987 address to the U.S. Congress, the Dalai Lama said that “China’s aggression” against Tibet “was a flagrant violation of international law. As China’s military occupation of Tibet continues, the world should remember that though Tibetans have lost their freedom, under international law Tibet today is still an independent state under illegal occupation.”
Also see:
Time: “China’s Residential Schools Separate a Million Tibetan Children From Their Families, U.N. Says”
“An accelerating assimilation campaign waged by the ruling Chinese Communist Party is threatening to utterly erase Tibet’s unique way of life. The latest salvo was revealed Monday, when three U.N. experts warned that roughly 1 million Tibetan children have been separated from their families and forcibly placed into Chinese state-run boarding schools, as part of efforts to absorb them ‘culturally, religiously and linguistically’ into the dominant Han Chinese culture.”
