---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Friends of Tibet
Kerala-based Human Rights and Social organisations have come forward
to protest the 'Olympics Torch of Shame' which will be on the Indian
Soil on Thursday, April 17, 2008.
Friends of Tibet, Design & People, Human Rights Law Network (Kerala),
Periyar Riverkeeper, Kashi, Swadeshi Jagran Manch, World Tibet Day,
Samajwadi Jana Parishad are some of the organisations participating in
Thursday's protest meet which will be held at the Theresa Square,
Opposite Vanitha Police station, Ernakulam on April 17, 2008 at
5:30pm. Organisations are also planning to hold a candle light vigil
and the screening of a documentary film on the Tibet issue at Theresa
Square. The candle light vigil is organised to protest the Chinese
aggression on Tibet and in memory of hundreds of activists who gave up
their lives for an independent Tibet since the 49th Anniversary of the
Tibetan Uprising on March 10, 2008.
Meanwhile massive 25-feet high 'Olympics Torch of Shame with No Flame'
conceptualised by Kashi Art Gallery is being erected at the Fort Kochi
beach on April 13 (Photos and a report:
http://peoplefortibet.blogspot.com/). The protest torch is attracting
hundreds of people and will be kept unlit till the Olympics Torch
leaves India.
Friends of Tibet is joining and organising protest marches and public
meets at various places in India on April 17, 2008 to highlight the
serious situation inside Chinese-occupied Tibet. To know more about
the organisation and its activities, visit: www.friendsoftibet.org. To
know more about events in India, you may call: +91.9815601768,
+91.9967021592, +91.9895884379 or email: support@friendsoftibet.org.
. . . . .
Friends of Tibet, PO Box: 16674, Bombay 400050, India.
. . . . .
Friends of Tibet is a people's movement to keep alive the issue of
Tibet through direct action. Our activities are aimed at ending
China's occupation of Tibet and the suffering of the Tibetan people.
Friends of Tibet supports the continued struggle of the Tibetan people
for independence. To know more, visit: www.friendsoftibet.org
. . . . .
Posts
1 comment:
Mukul Kesavan in The Telegraph, Calcutta:
“The controversy over Tibet is a controversy about pluralism. The main allegations against China — that it has tried to alter the demographic balance of Tibet by settling Han Chinese there, that it wishes to assimilate the religious and cultural distinctiveness of Tibetan identity into a larger Chinese identity — seek to highlight the Chinese State’s intolerance of difference.
“The main difference between the Indian attitude towards its borderlands and the Chinese State’s attitude towards Tibet is that India has made no attempt to change the demographic composition of its troubled peripheries through forced settlement. The reverse, in fact, is true.
“The argument, long made by sections of the Hindu Right, that the Kashmir problem ought to be solved by changing the demographic facts on the ground, is not a monstrous argument in purely democratic terms. There’s a reasonable justification for it: in a democratic republic, every citizen ought to have the right to buy land and settle in any part of that state.
“To limit that right on account of local sensibilities or grievances is, it can be argued, to pander to parochial prejudice…. The reason the Indian State is willing to weight its laws to accommodate particular sensibilities is because Indian democracy, from its inception, has been leavened by pluralism.
Post a Comment