DHARAMSALA: A group of Tibetan activists held a daylong hunger strike here to protest the Winter Olympics that opened in Beijing on Friday.
Five major Tibetan NGOs -- Students for Free Tibet (SFT), Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), Tibetan Women's Association (TWA), National Democratic Party of Tibet (NDPT), and Gu Chu Sum Association of former political prisoners of Tibet jointly -- staged the hunger strike as a mark of protest against the "flagrant human rights violations of Tibetans in Tibet".
Braving extreme cold weather conditions, around 10 Tibetan activists of these organisations observed the fast in Mcleodganj, where the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) is headquartered. Tibetans across the world are protesting against the Games and demanding the international community to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022.
Tenzin Lobsang, an activist from Students for Free Tibet, said, "The whole world is going to witness the genocide games which are happening inside China and they don't deserve to hold this kind of big event. Yesterday we heard that the Government of India is not going to participate in the opening and the closing ceremony and that's good news for us. It is good news for all human rights believers and we thank and welcome this decision."
Skier Arif Khan led a small four-strong Indian contingent during the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing on Friday amid a diplomatic boycott of the event by the country.
Rinzin, president of Students for a Free Tibet said, "As we all know it is the commencement of the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 and since the day when China was awarded the prestigious Olympic games, we made sure that the decision of IOC was wrong and we made it clear to the international community as well."
"Since then we have been organizing a number of campaigns and events and we have been calling for a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. We believe that China does not deserve to host the prestigious games and that's why we are organizing this one-day hunger strike and lots of people are joining us today," the SFT president said.