Olympic torch in Tibet, but only "for a day". Tibetans arrested in India
Beijing (AsiaNews) - On Saturday, June 21, the Olympic torch will arrive in Lhasa, where it will make the only stop of its voyage in the Tibetan region. After the repression of Tibetan demonstrations last March, Tibet remains closed to visitors, and the situation is very tense. The organising committee of Beijing 2008, through a press release on the website for the games, confirms that the torch will remain in the area "only for a day", instead of the three days originally planned, and that the change was made necessary by the earthquake last month in Sichuan.
The document states that "the Tibet Autonomous Region leg of the relay will be on June 21, with the relay taking place in Lhasa", while the government press agencies justify the modification of the route "because of the disasters in Sichuan". Currently the Olympic torch is crossing the majority Islamic region of Xinjiang, in the northwest of the country, for a tour that will last three days and pass through four different cities.
In the meantime, in India, arrests continue among the participants in the "March of return to Tibet": yesterday the police stopped 50 Tibetans while they were entering Dharchula, the last Indian city before the border with Tibet. In groups of four, the demonstrators reached the road blocks set up by the local security forces, determined to break through them and continue their journey; the more than two hundred policemen present stopped the demonstrators, forcing them one by one onto two different buses. This morning, while they were still in the custody of Indian agents, one of the leaders of the protest was approached by the correspondent for AsiaNews, to whom she confided: "The Indian authorities arrested us around 9.45 a.m.", affirms B. Tsering, president of the Tibetan Women's Association, "citing reasons that we had entered restricted area and even Indian civilians are not permitted into the area. Moreover, there was a trader's protest against the marchers as the Indian authorities citing security reasons had not resumed the trade on this route. This trade route is opened for trade from June 1st every year, and this year, because of the return march', the trade route was still not reopened". The demonstrators were not told where there would be taken, but at the moment the activist says she is in "Haldwani, and most probably they will take us out of the state of Uttaranchal".
The leader of the women's movement asks for the support of the Indian government, for which "the Tibetan community does not represent a threat: we also appeal", concludes B. Tsering, "to the international community to apply pressure to China to start sincere dialogue with the Dalai Lama. Our struggle is nonviolent, and we cannot and will not give up our struggle for Tibet". Commenting on the news of the new arrests, Tendor Dorjee, head of media relations for the Tibetan people's uprising movement, says he is not "surprised" by "the firm actions of the police", and stresses that "the marchers are determined to reach their goal".
(Nirmala Carvalho contributed to this report)
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