Lalit Mohan
Tribune News Service
Dharamsala, March 10: Young and elected Tibetan Prime Minister-in-exile Lobsang Sangay, who has inherited political power from the Dalai Lama, did not mince words while setting out his agenda during a speech delivered to Tibetans on the 53rd Uprising Day at McLeodganj today.
Instead of the generally diplomatic language used by the Dalai Lama in his political speech, Sangay was more direct in his attack against China. He called upon Tibetans to make 2012 a “Tibet lobby year”.
Sangay urged the Tibetans to reach out to elected representatives at the state and national levels in their respective countries and educate them about Tibet.
Sangay also stressed on educating Tibetans that had been his agenda since he got elected as the Tibetan Prime Minister-in-exile. China was contemplating that a generational change in leadership might weaken the Tibetan freedom movement.
However, resiliency of the Tibetan spirit combined with a coming generation of educated Tibetans would provide dynamic leadership and sustain the movement till freedom was restored in Tibet. Education should be given top priority so that educated and community-minded Tibetans would be produced who could sustain the Tibetan movement, he said.
Sangay reiterated commitment towards the middle-way approach advocated by the Dalai Lama in which he had sought meaningful autonomy under the Chinese sovereignty.
He said Hong Kong and Macao had been granted high degree of autonomy by the Chinese government. Despite resistance from Taiwan, China had offered the country a high degree of autonomy. However, Tibetans were not being granted even the genuine autonomy as stipulated in the Chinese constitution.
He said the Central Tibetan Administration (changed name of the Tibetan government-in-exile) represented and spoke for six million Tibetans.
If the Chinese government claimed that Tibetans enjoyed freedom and equality, it should allow democratic, transparent and fair elections in Tibet.
In the 53 years of Chinese occupation, no Tibetan had ever held the party secretary post in the Tibetan Autonomous Region.
Forty per cent of the Tibetan high school and college graduates were unemployed, he said.
Speaker of Tibetan parliament-in-exile Penpa Tsering also read a political message.