No news is no news

Immigrant Songs continue; Protests Day 7
Kathmandu, Nepal


Didn't make it to any of the pro-Tibet actions today - I spent most of the day arguing with Nepali immigration. (Do you sense a theme here?)

While I was in Maitighar at the new Immigration office (it's been moved from the previous convenient Bhrikutimandap location), there was a major action at the UN offices just across the bridge in Pulchowk, Patan. I'm passing on these news reports.


Police in Nepal clash with Tibet protestors; 44 held

The protesters were demonstrating peacefully near the main U.N. office in Kathmandu, holding banners reading "Free Tibet" and demanding the United Nations investigate a Chinese crackdown on protests inside Tibet.
But police quickly moved in to break up the gathering, dragging protesters away and throwing them into the back of trucks that then took them to a nearby detention center.

Photo by my friend Prakash Mathema who works for Agence France Presse.

These kids in Beijing are brave souls:
Ethnic Tibetan students staged a candle-lit vigil in Beijing on Monday, saying it was to pray for the dead, hours before a midnight deadline warning anti-Chinese rioters in the Tibetan capital to surrender.

Police kept reporters well away from the peaceful protest by dozens of apparently ethnic Tibetan students gathered inside the Central University for Nationalities.
It was a small, rare show of defiance in the host city of this year's Olympic Games, where Communist Party authorities are especially eager to prevent public shows of dissent.
"It was only to pray for the souls of the dead," said an ethnic Tibetan student ....

And courtesy of my Tibetan-speaking friend Amalia Rubin, who just returned from Lhasa a mere month ago, here is a photo e-smuggled out of Tibet, of the dead bodies in Ngawa. She writes:

This photo was recently sent to me by someone in Tibet. These are bodies in Ngawa. People shot by the police. These are REAL TIBETANS. REAL people being murdered.