New Delhi, 23rd Dec 2022: The ongoing Tibetan Parliamentary delegation’s first group comprising of Parliamentarians Khenpo Kada Ngedup Sonam, Tsering Yangchen, and Phurpa Dorjee Gyaldhong accompanied by Choenyi Tsering, ITCO staff, on its second day of Tibet advocacy campaign, had meetings with six Members of Parliament from both the houses of the Indian Parliament.
The first group of the Tibetan Parliamentary delegation called on Dr L. Hanumanthaiah, Rajya Sabha MP from Karnataka; Ms Indu Bala Goswami, Rajya Sabha MP from Himachal Pradesh; Shri Sunil Baburao Menthe, Lok Sabha MP from Maharashtra; Smt. Agatha Sangma, Lok Sabha MP from Meghalaya; Shri K. R. Suresh Redd, Rajya Sabha MP from Telangana; and Dr Aimee Yajinik, MP Rajya Sabha from Gujarat.
Greeting the Indian lawmakers, the Tibetan delegates presented each of them with a TPiE souvenir, a copy of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s book called ‘My land and my people’, and a book on Tibet entitled ‘Tibet was never a part of China’.
The Tibetan delegates appealed to the MPs to make PRC leadership accountable for upholding international law and treat Tibet as a matter of global concern, not China’s internal affair, to take the Tibetan issue with great urgency and gravely as China continues to threaten the security of India with the border clash that keeps happening now and then, to support an early resumption of dialogue with the representatives of His Holiness and the Chinese Government, and to pay attention to Tibet Plateau as China is destructing it through every means to attain economic advantage which significantly affects India and the whole world at large.
Extending their gratitude to India and its people for their longstanding support for the cause of Tibet, the Tibetan delegates urged the Indian lawmakers’ continued support. They informed them of the grim and alarming situation of Tibet with known 157 cases of self-immolations since 2009. They also spoke on the Chinese government’s policies of forcing three out of every four Tibetan students into a vast network of colonial boarding schools, separating children as young as four from their parents. The schools function as sites for remoulding children into Chinese nationals loyal to the CC aimed primarily to eradicate the Tibetan culture, language, and identity. China is known to be keeping control of every move of their citizen and they have crossed the limit of monitoring to such an extent that Chinese authorities have been gathering DNA samples across Tibet, by coercing people to give blood samples, or taking blood samples without informed, meaningful and freely given consent or justification including young children.