Considering the anticipation, The Prime Minister, Lobsang Sangay's address to the Tibetans on 'uprising day' was not so ground breaking nor earth shattering to say the least. A bit of a drab if you ask me.
Nevertheless, he did call to resume dialogue between the Chinese after a 2 year hiatus... however, am not sure how much more "talk" is going to help. We need positive action in the right direction NOW!
I found the following articles from two sources below:
(ARTICLE 1)
Make 2012 a Tibet lobby year, Sangay tells Tibetans
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.
(ARTICLE 2)
The Associated Press
Date: Saturday Mar. 10, 2012 7:45 AM ET
DHARAMSALA, India — The head of Tibet's government-in-exile blamed China on Saturday for a recent wave of self-immolations by Tibetans, saying that they have been denied the right to hold conventional protests.
Lobsang Sangay said Tibetans were left with no choice but to take extreme action by setting themselves on fire to protest Chinese rule. There have been 14 cases of self-immolations reported in the past 2 1/2 months to protest what Sangay called China's suppression of Tibetans' religion and culture.
Sangay's statement came as Tibetans observed two significant anniversaries Saturday: the unsuccessful 1959 revolt that caused their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to flee Tibet to India, and deadly anti-government riots that rocked Tibet's capital, Lhasa, in 2008.
Nearly 3,000 Tibetans attended a rally addressed by Sangay in the courtyard of a Buddhist monastery in Dharmsala, the seat of the government-in-exile in the northern Indian town. The Dalai Lama attended the meeting, but did not speak on the occasion.
"Long Live the Dalai Lama," the Tibetans chanted as they later marched through the town. Some of them had "Free Tibet" painted on their cheeks and carried the Tibetan flag with a yellow border and red and blue stripes.
Hundreds of Tibetans also marched through parts of New Delhi, starting from the memorial of India's independence leader Mohandas Gandhi. They carried banners reading "Justice has been raped in Tibet" and chanted slogans such as "What we want, we want freedom," "People of the world, support us."
"In actuality, Tibetans are treated as second-class citizens," Sangay said in his speech in Dharmsala. "When Tibetans gather peacefully and demand basic rights as outlined in the Chinese constitution, they are arrested, fired upon and killed as in the Jan. 23-24 peaceful protests when Chinese were celebrating their new year."
In January, Tibetan areas in western Sichuan province saw large demonstrations. Police fired on crowds in three separate areas, leaving several Tibetans dead and injuring dozens, according to Tibet support groups outside China.
On Saturday, London-based activist group Free Tibet and U.S. broadcaster Radio Free Asia said police had shot three Tibetans on Tuesday, killing one and wounding the others. The police had been looking for or had detained another man in connection with a Jan. 25 incident in which protesters tore down a Chinese flag at a police station in a Tibetan area of western Qinghai province, the reports said.
China blames the Tibetan leadership in exile for encouraging the self-immolations by Tibetans. Many of the protesters have been linked to a Buddhist monastery in the mountainous Aba prefecture of Sichuan province.
However, Sangay said the self-immolations were an emphatic rejection of the empty promises made by Chinese hard-liners.
Twenty-six Tibetans have committed self-immolations since 2009, he said.
He called upon Beijing to accept the Tibetans' middle way policy, which seeks genuine autonomy for Tibetans within the framework of the Chinese constitution.
"Hong Kong and Macau have been granted high degrees of autonomy," he said in reference to the two Chinese territories. "Despite resistance from Taiwan, China has offered Taiwan more autonomy. Why are Tibetans still not granted genuine autonomy as stipulated in the Chinese constitution?"
China's government says the Dalai Lama seeks to destroy the country's sovereignty by pushing independence for Tibet.
Sangay expressed his willingness to send envoys to resume dialogue with China after a gap of nearly two years, saying a peaceful resolution to the Tibet issue is in the best interest of China, the Chinese people and Tibetans.
Nine rounds of talks between Chinese officials and the Dalai Lama's representatives have failed to produce any breakthroughs.
He also said that Tibet has become one of the most militarized areas in the region, with China stationing several army divisions and dispatching thousands of paramilitary forces there.
"A Chinese scholar recently observed there are more Chinese than Tibetans, more police than monks, more surveillance cameras than windows in Lhasa. The entire region is under undeclared martial law," he said.
