03-24-2008, 02:12 PM
<b>Exiled Tibetans recall the indignities they fled</b>
Link
Mar 24, 2008
DHARAMSALA, India (Reuters) - The dormitories of the Tibetan refugee reception centre in northern India may be drab, but for the recently arrived exiles staying here they offer luxuries unthinkable in their homeland.
They are free to stick up any number of smiling pictures of the Dalai Lama, while a child can run around the main dormitory waving the Tibetan flag as noisily as he wants -- both prohibited activities in Tibet.
And soon enough each of them will get an audience with the Dalai Lama himself.
"If you talk about life in Tibet in one sense it's really improved and you can live a luxurious life," said Tenzin Norbu, who says he sneaked across the Nepal border a month ago disguised as a Nepali labourer.
"But if you go deeper than that every Tibetan has more serious problems not being addressed. Generally Tibetans don't have any rights, any speaking rights," he said.
Almost all of the 2,500 to 3,000 Tibetans who escape from the country each year pass through the centre in Dharamsala, the home of the Tibetan government in exile in northern India.
Many staying here now left Tibet only a few weeks before the recent violent protests flared up.
Few here expected the riots that broke out shortly after the March 10 anniversary of the failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule, but say they understand why they happened.
<b>Tibetans, they say, are tired of being outnumbered and outranked by Chinese, and resent the separation from the Dalai Lama, their spiritual leader.</b>
Sherab Radel, a 28-year-old Buddhist monk, was sick of hiding his many pictures of the Dalai Lama from the Chinese officials who sometimes showed up at his monastery in Amdo province.
Monks caught with such an image were forced to curse the Dalai Lama's name or be jailed, Radel says. And so, a month ago, he and another young monk from the monastery fled.
<b>"The Chinese government always says that all Tibetans have freedom of religion, but in reality it's just nonsense," he said.</b>
The first his parents knew of his decision was when he phoned them from Kathmandu to say he had fled the country. He says they were delighted.
MYSTERIOUS MEDICATION
He brought with him only the robes he was wearing and a small case packed neatly with religious texts, a pouch of mysterious brown pills which he described as a herbal cure for a whole range of ills, and a little photo album.
The album includes pictures of his monk friends, half a dozen identical passport photos of his monastery's portly head monk, and a picture of another monk who Radel said disappeared up into the sky soon after Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1950.
For now, he spends his days in happy anticipation of an audience with the Dalai Lama, whose hilltop house and temple complex lie a 10-minute stroll away past tourist-filled cafes and souvenir shops stuffed with Indian crafts.
"I don't have anything specific to say to him, but to meet our spiritual leader - that will be the most precious moment," he said.
His face fell a little when told the Dalai Lama had just left town to teach in Delhi, and so their meeting would not be as soon as Radel had hoped.
After that he will shift to a monastery, probably one in the Tibetan enclave established on the humid, subtropical plains in the south Indian state of Karnataka, a region that shares little in common with Himalayan plateaus and valleys.
<b>Sonam, the 16-year-old daughter of farmers in Dotoe in Tibet, says she just wants a good education, and thought India was the best place to find one.</b>
She told this to her sister, who is married and lives in Lhasa. Her sister agreed to help and fund her escape, on the condition Sonam also take along her sister's 8-year-old son into an unknowably long period of exile.
After her meeting with the Dalai Lama she will shift to a school outside Dharamsala which tries to instil both a sense of the Tibetan culture being eroded in the homeland and the English she will need to earn a decent living in India.
Sonam, who was extremely anxious that her surname and hometown not be revealed in case it got her family into trouble, bashfully covered her face with an English textbook and giggled when asked about her ambitions.
She composed herself and said that whatever her dreams might be, they would not come true so easily in Tibet.
<b>"The Chinese have made roads and more industry. Tibetan people go there and work," she said.
"But the heads of those industries are Chinese people."</b>
Link
Mar 24, 2008
DHARAMSALA, India (Reuters) - The dormitories of the Tibetan refugee reception centre in northern India may be drab, but for the recently arrived exiles staying here they offer luxuries unthinkable in their homeland.
They are free to stick up any number of smiling pictures of the Dalai Lama, while a child can run around the main dormitory waving the Tibetan flag as noisily as he wants -- both prohibited activities in Tibet.
And soon enough each of them will get an audience with the Dalai Lama himself.
"If you talk about life in Tibet in one sense it's really improved and you can live a luxurious life," said Tenzin Norbu, who says he sneaked across the Nepal border a month ago disguised as a Nepali labourer.
"But if you go deeper than that every Tibetan has more serious problems not being addressed. Generally Tibetans don't have any rights, any speaking rights," he said.
Almost all of the 2,500 to 3,000 Tibetans who escape from the country each year pass through the centre in Dharamsala, the home of the Tibetan government in exile in northern India.
Many staying here now left Tibet only a few weeks before the recent violent protests flared up.
Few here expected the riots that broke out shortly after the March 10 anniversary of the failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule, but say they understand why they happened.
<b>Tibetans, they say, are tired of being outnumbered and outranked by Chinese, and resent the separation from the Dalai Lama, their spiritual leader.</b>
Sherab Radel, a 28-year-old Buddhist monk, was sick of hiding his many pictures of the Dalai Lama from the Chinese officials who sometimes showed up at his monastery in Amdo province.
Monks caught with such an image were forced to curse the Dalai Lama's name or be jailed, Radel says. And so, a month ago, he and another young monk from the monastery fled.
<b>"The Chinese government always says that all Tibetans have freedom of religion, but in reality it's just nonsense," he said.</b>
The first his parents knew of his decision was when he phoned them from Kathmandu to say he had fled the country. He says they were delighted.
MYSTERIOUS MEDICATION
He brought with him only the robes he was wearing and a small case packed neatly with religious texts, a pouch of mysterious brown pills which he described as a herbal cure for a whole range of ills, and a little photo album.
The album includes pictures of his monk friends, half a dozen identical passport photos of his monastery's portly head monk, and a picture of another monk who Radel said disappeared up into the sky soon after Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1950.
For now, he spends his days in happy anticipation of an audience with the Dalai Lama, whose hilltop house and temple complex lie a 10-minute stroll away past tourist-filled cafes and souvenir shops stuffed with Indian crafts.
"I don't have anything specific to say to him, but to meet our spiritual leader - that will be the most precious moment," he said.
His face fell a little when told the Dalai Lama had just left town to teach in Delhi, and so their meeting would not be as soon as Radel had hoped.
After that he will shift to a monastery, probably one in the Tibetan enclave established on the humid, subtropical plains in the south Indian state of Karnataka, a region that shares little in common with Himalayan plateaus and valleys.
<b>Sonam, the 16-year-old daughter of farmers in Dotoe in Tibet, says she just wants a good education, and thought India was the best place to find one.</b>
She told this to her sister, who is married and lives in Lhasa. Her sister agreed to help and fund her escape, on the condition Sonam also take along her sister's 8-year-old son into an unknowably long period of exile.
After her meeting with the Dalai Lama she will shift to a school outside Dharamsala which tries to instil both a sense of the Tibetan culture being eroded in the homeland and the English she will need to earn a decent living in India.
Sonam, who was extremely anxious that her surname and hometown not be revealed in case it got her family into trouble, bashfully covered her face with an English textbook and giggled when asked about her ambitions.
She composed herself and said that whatever her dreams might be, they would not come true so easily in Tibet.
<b>"The Chinese have made roads and more industry. Tibetan people go there and work," she said.
"But the heads of those industries are Chinese people."</b>