Dharamshala — Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) and Tibetans celebrated the 35th anniversary of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize as well as International Human Rights Day on December 10, 2024 in Dharamshala, HP, India.
Parliamentary delegations from New Zealand and Fiji, the high-level delegation of the India Foundation, Delhi, led by its Chairman Shri. Suresh Prabhu, former Cabinet Minister of the Government of India, and Representative of the Regional Liaison of Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, Australia as the main guests attended the celebration.
Top CTA officials, representatives of Tibetan organisations, students from the Upper Tibetan Village School, monks, nuns and Tibetans from the Dharamshala region also took part in the event. This day is also celebrated around the world by Tibetans and supporters of Tibet.
Kalon Gyari Dolma, Officiating Sikyong delivered Kashag's statement, "Today, we celebrate the 35th anniversary of the conferment of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. On this momentous occasion, the Kashag offers its profound gratitude and obeisance to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and also extend greetings to the members of the Nobel Prize Committee for the recognition of His Holiness’s lifetime commitment towards world peace.
"Today, as we celebrate both the conferment of Nobel Peace Prize to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the International Human Rights Day, it is the appropriate that we speak on His Holiness’s tireless efforts against all odds in preserving the Tibetan language, and also promotion of the rich ancient Buddhist wisdom & its cultural values. And also, His Holiness’s role as a whistleblower for the protection of global ecology and environment.
"His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s visionary leadership has opened a wide perspective for Tibetans in the freedom struggle and for the restoration and preservation of Tibetan religion, culture, and language based on non-violence and dialogue as a means to finding a lasting political solution.
"Alarmingly, the Chinese government’s education policy is targeted at producing tools to retain its control over Tibet. It has replaced Tibetan language with Chinese as the medium of instruction and around one million Tibetan children are forcibly enrolled in colonial boarding schools, denying them from growing up with their parents’ linguistic and cultural tradition and forcing them to undergo military training and study communist ideology. It is a policy to make the future Tibetan generations bereft of their own identity, cultural and family values and further marginalise Tibetans within the Han Chinese society."
Khenpo Sonam Tenphel, Speaker of Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile (TPiE) delivered statement of TPiE, "Today is also the international Human Rights Day. It marks the completion of 76 years since the United Nations General Assembly adopted and proclaimed in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, what is tragically saddening as we commemorate this day is that Tibet still remains a victim of armed invasion and occupation by communist China.
"The human rights situation of the Tibetan people in Tibet has kept worsening year after year, with nothing to cite as an improvement in this downward trend. On the contrary, the government of China has implemented in Tibet a succession of highly brutal policies of repression directed at obliterating the Tibetan national, linguistic, and religious identity and destroying the country’s natural environment.
"These have given rise to outbursts of Tibetan protests which included the spontaneous uprising of 10 March 1959. A succession of peaceful protests by Tibetans also took place in the 1980s and 1990s. And in 2008, Tibetans across the occupied country’s three historical provinces took part in spontaneous mass uprising protests against the Chinese government. Besides, from the year 2009, till date, a total of 157 Tibetans are fully known and verified to have carried out peaceful self-immolation protests against the government of China. They all raised demands that His Holiness the Dalai Lama be invited back to Tibet, that there be freedom and independence for the country, and so forth. Nevertheless, the government of China has thus far not at all responded in a way which addressed the ground reality of the tragic situation in Tibet. Rather, it has completely ignored the human rights of the Tibetan people and, instead, detained, interrogated, beaten, imprisoned, restricted the free movement of the victims and other Tibetan people, while making false allegations."
Fijian MP Rinesh Sharma, New Zealand MPs Helen White and Ingrid Leary, Indian Foundation Lt Gen Arun Kumar Sahni, former Minister Shri Suresh Prabhu and MP Joseph Mooney delivered their speeches at the celebration and shared their experiences of visiting Dharamshala, headquarters of the CTA, and pledged that they would support the Tibetan cause and raise Tibetan human rights issues in their parliaments in New Zealand and Fiji.
