Tibetan Nobel Laureate’s birthday celebrated in London

London, 6 July 2003: The 68th birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama that falls today was celebrated here in London yesterday with colourful Tibetan traditional
songs and dances that won appreciative applause from
the audience who filled the Westminster Cathedral Hall
and its balcony. The afternoon’s programme concluded
with Tibetans and others in the audience taking part
en masse in ‘gorshey’ (Tibetan circle dance) amidst
outbursts of friendly laughter on realising or seeing
every wrong step taken by gorshey first-timers.

Speaking on the occasion, Mrs. Kesang Y. Takla,
Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama for
Northern Europe at the London Office of Tibet, said
that since the age of 16 when he also had to shoulder
the temporal responsibility, His Holiness has been
doing all he could to peacefully resolve the issue of
Tibet through dialogue with the Chinese authorities.
She said that all over the world people campaign and
fight to get democratic rights from their leaders but
that the Tibetan people were fortunate to have a very
special leader in His Holiness who is promoting more
democracy.

The Tibetan community members, many of whom had come
from outside London, prayed on stage for the long life
of their spiritual and temporal leader after
prostrating and placing scarves before a portrait of
His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who in 1989 was awarded
the Nobel Prize for Peace for leading the non-violent
Tibetan struggle for freedom from China.

An appreciative audience thoroughly enjoyed the
cultural song and dance performances staged by the
Tibetan Community Dance Group lead by the community’s
elected Culture Secretary, Tsering Passang. The
appearance on the stage of traditionally dressed
junior Tibetan dancers ranging from age 4 to 11
apparently delighted the audience who responded with
spontaneous applause and continued to clap throughout
the children’s song-dance performance titled,
“Tse-Thang Gang-la” (On the playground).

The programme that included singing of the Tibetan
national anthem was jointly organised by the Office of
Tibet, the Tibet Society and the Tibetan Community in
Britain. Mr. Chonpel Tsering, the re-elected secretary
of the community, very ably conducted it.

By: Tsering Tashi (Office of Tibet, London)