Tibetans mark 67th anniversary of Lhasa uprising with peace marches in HP

Kullu: Tibetans on Tuesday marked 67th anniversary of the Lhasa uprising of 1959 by holding peace marches at various places in Himachal Pradesh, even as the Tibetan govt-in-exile released a statement accusing China of unleashing "horrifying devastation in Tibet".The statement said more than two million Tibetans had met with untimely death in the last 77 years following China's invasion of Tibet in 1949."The Chinese govt remained relentless in destroying the religious, cultural, and linguistic heritage and other characteristic features of the Tibetan people that define the Tibetan national identity," said the statement."The Chinese Communist Party has forced countless numbers of Tibetan children to be removed from their parents and communities to be enrolled in boarding schools with a diabolical strategy to transform the Tibetan identity into a Chinese one," the statement added.In the statement, the Tibetan govt-in-exile also criticised China for not budging from its hardline policy to solve the Sino-Tibetan conflict."Since 1979, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) took a series of steps by which it made efforts to seek a solution to the Sino-Tibetan conflict by means of adopting a middle way policy. However, leaders of the People's Republic of China have refused to budge from their existing hardline policy, with the result that there were no positive developments in the situation," said the statement.On March 10, 1959, Tibetans had staged an uprising against the Chinese govt in Lhasa. However, the revolt was suppressed after China launched a crackdown against the protestors.Paying tributes to all Tibetans who were killed in the uprising, the CTA, in a statement, accused China of repression and environmental destruction in Tibet."The Chinese govt's reckless infrastructure development and large-scale resource mining projects caused temperatures on the Tibetan Plateau to rise at three times the global average. The Medog hydropower project, launched last year, alongside other hydropower projects on major and mid-sized rivers, not only devastates the ecosystem of the Tibetan plateau, but continues to pose a direct threat to water security," added the statement.To mark the anniversary, a commemorative event was also held in Mcleodganj, Dharamshala, on Tuesday.