Students for a Free Tibet and Regional Tibetan Youth Congress Delhi
held a public gathering yesterday (Wednesday, August 15th) to mark India’s 66th
Independence Day by unveiling a re-creation of the Declaration of Tibetan
Independence issued by the His Holiness the 13th Dalai Lama in 1913. The year
2013 will mark exactly 100 years since Tibet proclaimed the restoration of its
independence. The text of this proclamation has survived, though the original
document did not. The 10 foot-long handwritten scroll, bordered with brocade
and silk in the style of a thangka, was unveiled by Shri Vijay Kranti,
renowned photojournalist and a long time Tibet supporter. The proclamation was
read out by prominent Tibetan and Indian community leaders, MPs, students, and
Indian supporters in Tibetan, Hindi and English.
India’s independence was won through a freedom struggle based on the
principles of non-violence, non-cooperation and civil disobedience. The
Tibetan freedom struggle shares the same values as the Indian Independence
movement. At this crucial time when almost 50 Tibetans have made the ultimate
sacrifice to protest Chinese rule, it is imperative that we remember Tibet’s
past as a sovereign nation and commit ourselves to the Tibetan freedom
struggle.
As the world’s largest democracy, and with a particularly fierce freedom
struggle essentially based on Mahatma Gandhi’s principles of non-violence and
non-cooperation, India has a moral obligation to add her voice to the
multilateral government pressure on China to stop the crackdown in Tibet.
Therefore, Indian members of Students for a Free Tibet has initiated a
Petition campaign to call citizen of India to stand with Tibet.
As a conscious Indian citizen who greatly values my independence, I have
signed this petition to strongly urge Shri S. M. Krishna, The Minister of
External Affairs to make a strong and clear statement acknowledging the
crackdown in Tibet, and to highlight the human rights violations being carried
out in Tibet today.
