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Close look at Tibetan protest in Kathmandu
By Jiao Xiaoyang (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-19 09:02 I was roaming the streets with a friend near the royal palace in Kathmandu last Wednesday at about 2:30pm, where media vehicles were parked outside the building and reporters were waiting behind cameramen for Nepal's deposed king Gyanendra to leave the premises.
It was an otherwise calm afternoon - until a police van passed by minutes later. "China out! China out!" people in the van shouted. I saw a few men and women, donning the red robes of Tibetan Buddhists, packed together with local police inside the vehicle. These Tibetans cried out hysterically before they got out of sight, their behavior in stark contrast to the serenity of the Himalayan country. A few minutes later, another camouflaged truck drove by, with more such Tibetans inside shouting similar slogans. There were about 30 to 40 men and women in the two vehicles. "Their job is done today," my friend said to me. I realized what I saw were the infamous Tibetan demonstrators who have been protesting almost daily near the Chinese embassy in Kathmandu. Local friends had told me that these people normally started their half-hour protests every day at 2:00 pm. Their activities often ended in clashes with local police. I had seen media reports and pictures on the protesters before I arrived in the city last week. On the day of my arrival, I went to the site of their daily protests. I got to the visa section of the Chinese embassy. The protesters were gone, but there were still several parliamentary police sitting on the pavement. They looked tired and bored. My friend started talking to the police in Nepalese. One of the young men said the protests had been going on for four or five months. ""They come as religious people. That stops us from using force," he said. Across the street corner, a woman peddling roasted corn on the pavement seemed angrier. "The demonstrators don't buy my corn, and the time they protest, the traffic is disrupted and I don't have buyers," she said. "I don't know what they eat. They seem to be so strong - they show up every day shouting something we do not understand. A single one of them can jostle with several policemen at a time," she added. Still, some people did not seem to be bothered too much by the protests. "The 'drama' is staged at a specific time - after and before that 'drama' things are normal," said a young guard with the SBI Bank Limited outlet opposite the Chinese embassy visa office. "It's such a well-organized event." |
