Dharamshala: Five major Tibetan NGOs, namely Students for Free Tibet (SFT), Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), Tibetan Women’s Association (TWA), National Democratic Party of Tibet (NDPT) and Gu Chu Sum Association of former political prisoners of Tibet jointly organize a-daylong hunger strike campaign in north Indian hill town Dharamshala to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 which is beginning today and to protest against the flagrant human rights violations of Tibetans inside Tibet. About ten Tibetan activists of these organisations are observing one day fast and sitting on a protest here in extremely cold conditions on Friday in McLeodganj, Upper Dharamsala. Tibetans all over the world are protesting today and demanding the international community to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022.
Tenzin Lobsang, an activist from Students for Free Tibet, says, “We are protesting against the Beijing winter Olympics. The whole world is going to witness the genocide games which are happening inside China and they don’t deserve to hold this kind of big event. Yesterday we heard that the government of India is not going to participate in the opening and the closing ceremony and that’s good news for us. It is good news for all human rights believers and we thank and welcome this decision.”
Rinzin, president of Students for a Free Tibet says, “As we all know it is the commencement of the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 and since the day when China was awarded the prestigious Olympic games, we made sure that the decision of IOC was wrong and we made it clear to the international community as well. Since then we have been organizing a number of campaigns and events and we have been calling for a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. We believe that China does not deserve to host the prestigious games and that’s why we are organizing this one-day hunger strike and lots of people are joining us today.”
Arvind Sharma is an award winning bi-lingual journalist with more than 20 years of experience.
He has worked with Divya Himachal, Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhasker, Vir Partap, Ajit and PTI.
In 2010, he was conferred the Himachal Kesri journalism award. He reports on the Tibetan Government in Exile, politics, sports, tourism and other topics. He lives in Dharamshala.
