Steps Toward Freedom

Flanked by motorists honking and hollering support, activists on the March for Tibetan Independence trekked through the streets of Ventura and Oxnard on Wednesday in the final week of a 525-mile freedom walk from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

The 23 walkers, three of whom say they were tortured by the Chinese, are protesting China’s 51-year occupation of Tibet. The walkers carry large, colorful signs with slogans such as “Honk for Tibet” and “Boycott Chinese Goods.” They hope to increase awareness about the Tibetans’ plight.

Ani Palchen Dolma, a former political prisoner who spent 21 years in Chinese jails, came to the United States from India for the first of three long walks to support the cause this year.

A Tibetan nun before China’s 1949 invasion, Dolma became a resistance fighter after her father died in the struggle for freedom. Dolma, 67, said she was captured by the Chinese when she was 23 and interrogated, tortured and “buried for nine months in a black hole, where [I] had to live in my own feces.”

Dolma said she is sure things are worse now than when she was there. “With all the death and destruction things are not better today,” she said. “It’s worse because they are not even allowed to have peaceful demonstrations.” After being freed by the Chinese, Dolma fled Tibet for India in 1990.

Dolma said bringing the sufferings to the citizens of the United States is the only way to bring about change.

“We are here in America today to fight for justice,” she said through an interpreter. “We are very grateful for America because you are the most powerful nation and only you can help us achieve our final struggle for freedom.”

Twelve activists started the walk in San Francisco on April 25, but organizers said more will complete the trip in Santa Monica on Tuesday. That is when the group will be joined by a smaller contingent of freedom walkers heading north from San Diego. Along the way the groups give about four presentations a week at churches, schools and senior centers to help raise awareness and money for the cause.

Local walkers sometimes join the group for one or several days to show support, said Lawrence Gerstein, president of the International Tibet Independence Movement. But the walk can’t support more than about 15 because the organization needs to provide lodging at churches or community centers and often is responsible for all the meals for the walkers.

Grass-roots donations support the organization and the walk, Gerstein said, and every penny counts. “We try to collect money along the way as well as beforehand, but it’s difficult.”

This is the fifth walk put on by the International Tibet Independence Movement in the last five years.

Nina Kinga, a college student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, said she joined the walk because she “feels strongly about any injustice.”

She said her family’s history--her mother lived in Germany during World War II and her Pakistani father survived the war that divided India and Pakistan--shaped her activism.

“Most of my family is messed up because of those two events, and I know if people had helped stop the Holocaust, it would be different now,” she said. Kinga’s sister is a performance artist and activist in Los Angeles, and Kinga does whatever she can.

“Raising awareness is not going to hurt and it could certainly help,” she said. “I just don’t know how many will have to die before that happens.”

The group, which has spent three days in Ventura County, heads to Malibu today. The former political prisoners will talk about their experiences at 7 tonight at the Great Pacific Ironworks Patagonia store in Ventura at 235 W. Santa Clara St.

For information, call 643-6074.