"Free Tibet!" "Boycott the Beijing Olympics!": nearly 200 people -- Tibetans and Taiwanese alike -- shouted as they marched through streets in Taipei City to commemorate the 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese invasion.
"More than 100,000 [Tibetans] were killed during the 1959 uprising against Chinese rule," Chou Mei-li (周美里), president of Taiwan Friends of Tibet (TFOT), said as she explained the importance of the event before the demonstrators departed from Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall yesterday afternoon.
"Each year on this date, Tibetans worldwide and their supporters walk out of their homes to commemorate the day," she said. "We, the Taiwanese, certainly won't be absent from it."
The parade, organized by TFOT, the Taiwan-Tibet Exchange Foundation and the Taiwan Tibetan Welfare Association, began right after a simple memorial ceremony in which Tibetans in Taiwan sang the Tibetan national anthem and Tibetan monks chanted Buddhist chants.
The marchers held up placards that read "stop Chinese colonization in Tibet" and "free Tibet," as well as photos of some Tibetan political prisoners.
"The youngest political prisoner in the world -- the Panchen Lama," the inscription above a picture of a child on a placard said.
Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, born in 1989, was named the 11th Panchen Lama -- the second-highest ranking monk in the Tibetan religion -- by the Dalai Lama in 1995.
However, as soon as he was named the Panchen Lama, he disappeared and the Chinese government appointed its own Panchen Lama.
The whereabouts of Gedhun are unknown to this day.
Another placard bore a picture of Rungyal Adrak, who openly advocated the Dalai Lama's return to Tibet and demanded Gedhun's release last August. As a result, he was arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison.
The procession ran into a Fuwa, the mascot of the Beijing Olympics, when they were approaching Taipei 101 Tower.
At the entrance of an exhibition hall to promote the exhibition, the exhibition organizer had someone dressed up as a Fuwa to promote the event.
As soon as the demonstrators spotted the Olympic mascot, some started to yell "Fuwa, get out" and "boycott the Beijing Olympics."
No further exchange continued as the exhibition staff quickly pulled the Fuwa inside.
Not all participants support boycotting the Olympics.
Erinn Low, a Canadian who is studying Mandarin in Taiwan, said that athletes' rights to fulfill their life-long dreams to take part in the Olympics should not be taken away, but added she supported the demonstration because it would raise public awareness on the Tibetan issue.
Having participated in the event in India several times, it was the first time that Dhundup Gyalpo, a Tibetan student at Tamkang University, took part in the rally in Taiwan.
He was surprised at the turnout for the parade.
"Even though there are only few Tibetans here, the support is huge," Gyalpo said. "This just shows that the Tibetan issue is well alive."
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