Commemoration of the 64th Tibetan Women’s Uprising Day in Dharamsala
DHARAMSALA, 13 March: Tibetan women from every walk of life took part in the Tibetan Women’s Association’s (TWA) commemoration of the 64th anniversary of the Tibetan Women’s Uprising Day and marched from Mcleod Ganj to Dharamsala on Sunday.
Rinchen Khando, founding president of TWA and former Kalon who attended the commemoration ceremony as the Chief Guest paid tribute to the patriotic Tibetan women who selflessly sacrificed their lives for Tibet on 12 March 1959 and urged Tibetans in exile to work to sustain the rich culture and religion and to take up the mantle of the Tibetan freedom movement.
TWA, in their statement, paid tribute to all the patriotic Tibetan women who selflessly sacrificed their lives for Tibet the Tibetan Women’s Uprising Day and said “During the uprising, hundreds of Tibetan women lost their lives in the brutal crackdown, and many of them were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and beaten without trial. We stand in solidarity with all the supreme sacrifices made by these martyrs.”
Calling out China for its systematic repression and human rights violations in Chinese-occupied Tibet over the last 64 years, TWA urged the UN, National Committees, world leaders, members of the parliament and independent human rights organizations to press China to “engage with the envoys of His Holiness the Dali Lama and to resume the stalled Sino-Tibet dialogue based on the Middle Way Approach to peacefully resolve the issue of Tibet.”
The women’s group further called for the release of the 11th Panchen Lama and all Tibetan political prisoners in addition to calling on the Chinese government to stop the implementation of the colonial boarding school system in Tibet.
Calls were also made for the UN High Commissioner to have immediate, meaningful and unrestricted access to all areas of Tibet while the TWA also demanded Mark N Casper, the CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific, to stop selling DNA testing kits to China.
Following the anniversary function, TWA led a peace march from the Tibetan National Martyrs’ memorial outside Tsug-lag-Khang to Kacheri in lower Dharamsala to commemorate the 64th anniversary of the Tibetan Women’s Uprising Day.
On March 12, 1959, two days after the March 10 uprising in the Tibetan capital, thousands of Tibetan women took to the streets of Lhasa, demanding freedom and protested against the illegal occupation of Tibet by the Chinese regime. Tibetans observe the day as Tibetan Women’s Uprising day.
