75 Protesters Demand End to Chinese Rule of Tibet

About 75 placard-waving protesters marched in front of the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles on Wednesday as part of an international demonstration marking an uprising 40 years ago against China’s takeover in Tibet.

“The Chinese are trying to annihilate the Tibetan people as a race,” said Kesang Dolkar, an Orange County nurse who fled Tibet at the age of 9 in 1959.

“Under the Chinese, there are starvation, torture, forced labor and mass murder,” Dolkar said.

“We’re pursuing self-determination in a nonviolent way,” said Tseten Thanucharas, a hospital laboratory director who left Tibet when she was 10. “If we don’t get autonomy relatively soon, we don’t know how long we can pursue this by nonviolent means.”

Some of the protesters, like 41-year-old computer programmer David Lang, were part of a caravan of vehicles that drove up from San Diego to participate in Wednesday’s demonstration.

Lang said he “wanted to make people aware of the genocide that’s going on in Tibet.”

Among the placards paraded in front of the consulate was one calling for religious freedom in Tibet and others citing the alleged death toll under Chinese rule.

The demonstration concluded with a candlelight vigil outside the consulate. The protesters were orderly, making no attempt to enter the building.

There was no response from anyone in the consulate, in the 400 block of Shatto Place.

Much larger demonstrations were staged overseas.

In the northern Indian city of Dharmsala, the Tibetan people’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, addressed a crowd that included 4,000 Tibetans and scores of international observers, including Hollywood actors Richard Gere and Goldie Hawn.

The Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, accused China of stepping up repression in Tibet , which shares a border with India, and refusing to discuss with him a compromise on the Himalayan territory.

“A lack of political will and courage on the part of the Chinese leadership has resulted in their failure to reciprocate my numerous overtures over the years,” the Dalai Lama said.

“It breaks my heart and makes me cry,” said Hawn. “When Tibet can be free, then all human beings can be free.”

Tibetan protesters in New Delhi burned 40 Chinese flags, lit firecrackers and burned an effigy of Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

About 5,000 Tibetans also demonstrated Wednesday in the Nepalese capital of Katmandu.

Wednesday’s protest activities observed the 40th anniversary of a revolt against Chinese rule that resulted in the crackdown that forced the Dalai Lama into exile.

China claims that Tibet historically was a Chinese province, but Tibetans say that they were independent for generations. Since the Dalai Lama fled, about 120,000 Tibetans have followed him into exile in India. Thousands more live in Europe and North America.

In the Tibetan capital of Lhasa on Wednesday, Chinese military vehicles patrolled streets near the Barkhor, the market and Buddhist pilgrimage route that surrounds the 7th century Jokhang, Tibet’s oldest temple, according to the London-based Free Tibet Campaign. No disturbances were reported.

Times staff writer Eric Malnic and the Associated Press contributed to this story.