India-Tibetan Cooperation Forum to mark ‘Protest Day’ against Beijing’s aggression
DHARAMSALA, 2 Aug: The India-Tibetan Cooperation Forum(ITCF) has decided to observe 20 October as a protest day against China’s aggression.
The ITCF, an umbrella body of Indians supporting the Tibetan freedom movement, has decided to observe 20 October as a protest day against Beijing for its attack on Arunachal Pradesh in 1962 and on Ladakh in 2020, noted a report on The Sentinal, an English daily newspaper from Assam.
Former Arunachal Minister and Tibetan cause India Core Group national convenor Rinchen Khandu Khrimey has stated in the report that ITFC will hold demonstrations with other India-Tibet support groups on 20 Oct “to send a strong message to Beijing asserting that India would safeguard its territory at any cost.”
The ITCF has taken the decision on Saturday in Guwahati at its meet and that the function would be held in Tawang which Beijing claims as the southern part of Tibet.
Additionally, he has stated that the political head of the exiled Tibetans, Central Tibetan Administration’s President PAnpa Tsering is likely to attend the function.
“The message to New Delhi aims at indicating that Sino-India ties cannot progress unless Tibet issue is amicably resolved and His Holiness 14th Dalai Lama regains his Potala Palace in Lhasa in a dignified manner,” Khrimey has said.
The Chinese attack on Arunachal started on 20 Oct. 1962 while the Chinese aggression led to the face-off at Galwan valley in Ladakh in June last year.
China claims the entire Arunachal Pradesh as its territory as it calls it ‘South Tibet,’ a claim resolutely rejected by India. The border dispute between the two Asian giants covers a 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC).
The McMahon Line demarcation is the current effective boundary between China and India after the Chinese occupation of Tibet. It is a demarcation line drawn on the map referred to in the Shimla Accord, a treaty signed between Britain and Tibet in 1914.
