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Please read the petition below and forward it to your contacts. I will be there tomorrow in Brussels!! Subject: petition demonstration tuesday European Council Dear Friends, I would like to thank you for your help yesterday at the demonstration place Poelaerts. It is the best at this moment to work unitedly together to show Europe who we are and what we want. For this goal we made a petition that we put under this note. Please read it and send to your contacts. Tomorrow we demonstrate in front of the European Council, rue de la Loi 175, in Brussels, starting on 11.00. Metro Arts Loi or Schumann. We hope to meet with you there! Thank you for all your work, Yangdutso PETITION OF THE TIBETANS OF BELGIUM TO THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL, 18th of March 2008 Mr. Secretary General Javier Solana, We, the Tibetans that found refuge in Belgium, stand before you today to urge you in the strongest possible terms to undertake action to protect our families in our homeland. As you will know, since the 10th of March of this year, the 49th commemoration of the complete annexation of Tibet by the Communist regime of China, many outbreaks of protest have started all over our country. At first, like in Myanmar/ Burma, these protests were led by the religious community and lay people joined. Although these protest were peaceful, the situation escalated immediately, due to heavy repression of the Tibetan protest by Chinese armed forces and direct attacks on the monasteries. Even though officially this news is practically silenced in China, messages keep reaching us that special troops and tanks are positioned in the Autonomous Region as well as in our other historical eastern provinces called Amdo (Gansu) and Kham (Sechuan) , monasteries are besieged, many victims are reported and all traffic is stopped. In this manner, our country is virtually locked and the regime will track down the protesters and the wounded mercilessly. We fear for our families left behind. Some of the Tibetan Community of Belgium’s well over 800 members are able to reach their kin on the phone and some emails and pictorial witnessing have come out. The situation is extremely grave. Clearly, the “peacefully liberated” as the Communists call us, cannot tolerate the repression of the Chinese regime as they have suffered from it for the last half century. In this year of the Olympic Games, it still looks like the reforms they talk about in China, are not of much use to us Tibetans. Two recent examples: the high tech railroad has already served to transport troops into our country and minerals and precious metals are expediently transported out to the booming industrial regions on the coast of mainland China. In “Land reforms” our nomads are forced to live in flat blocks, access to their lands and water for their flocks made difficult. In short, people are uprooted and nature is exploited, bringing with it more poverty and irreparable environmental degradation. How can our brothers and sisters in Tibet live like that? Mr. Secretary General, allow us to ask of you respectfully to do all you can to pressure the Chinese leadership into consideration of our way of life, to grant more democracy also to us – a so called minority – and to cease fire and all manner of repressions, torture and control. We wish to see better negotiations between our democratically chosen government from Dharamsala that follows the peaceful program set out by H.H. the Dalai Lama, our spiritual leader, and the Chinese government. We thank you for your kind consideration of our request. With best wishes for your health and happiness, Tibetan Youth Congress, Chushi Gangdrug, Tibetan Community of Belgium, Les Amis du Tibet Yangdutso Yangkartsang |