This March in San Francisco, hundreds of Tibetans and their supporters rallied to protest the government of China and to commemorate the Tibetan uprising of 1959.
“As we are in a free nation,” one of the protesters, Lobsang Chodon, told the Epoch Times, “we have the rights to rally and protest; we have the rights to parade and speak out. We can say whatever we want to say. So we have to speak out loudly for our brothers and sisters who cannot speak out. We will fight until the end, until Tibet is freed, until we can get back to our homeland.”
In March 1959, the Dalai Lama (born 1935), champion of the rights of the Tibetan people and autonomy for Tibet, was forced into exile by the Chinese Communist Party.
This had not been the plan.
The plan had been to kidnap the Dalai Lama as he attended a theatrical performance at the invitation of People’s Liberation Army. The PLA’s invitation or demand that the Dalai Lama attend included an insistence that he not bring his guards with him and that no one be told that he would be leaving the palace.
The Dalai Lama accepted or pretended to accept the invitation.
Word of the danger spread rapidly. On the day that he was scheduled to travel, many thousands of Tibetans surrounded his palace before the CCP could get its hands on him. And the Dalai Lama managed to flee into exile.
I welcome these protests, for they remind us of a history we must not forget.
