Helping hand, some muscle

NEW DELHI, APRIL 17: I am sorry. We could have provided you a more “spectacular” protest today if security arrangements were little more relaxed than 17,000 police personnel, including commandos, on their toes. For those of you who couldn’t see us, there was a heart-rending yak dance as our parallel freedom torch was carried through in Delhi, and if that was not enough, one Buddhist nun knelt down in front of a policeman and said, “Please help us, China is killing our people inside Tibet.”

But this was the sideshow.

China has once again proved that with its military power it can even turn the central heart of the capital of a free and democratic country like India into a military zone, throw the city’s roads into gridlock. Even if for a few hours.

I started my day with a protest plan but was unsure of executing it in this maze of security. The aim was to make ourselves heard. With fellow activists, we revisited our plans first thing in the morning and by 11 am, our plans had already changed several times as we got to know more details about the security. Many of our activists got arrested even before they could do anything. By 4 pm, it was impossible for our people to reach the protest site in groups. I was constantly coordinating but the more phone calls I made, I realized that our protests were dissipating in the face of an impenetrable fortress around Rajpath.

But the torch has left for Bangkok and we have registered our protest even though it has left one young Tibetan with a broken arm and a monk with a swollen groin thanks to the police lathi charge near Rashtrapati Bhavan. Of course, this isn’t the news, the news is that the torch came, the torch ran and the torch left. Also, the police action happened behind bushes and toilets where activists were hiding. About 300 Tibetans have been arrested and they are being detained in six different police stations across Delhi, they should be released in batches as the torch gets farther and farther away from Delhi.

When the massive state mechanism of control comes into play, it systematically rolls over individual freedom. Three years ago, the local police created a similar “sterile zone” in Bangalore when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao came visiting. The Bangalore police not only withdrew our protest permission, they detained all Tibetans in the city. In a desperate measure to vent our voice of freedom, I had to climb up to the high tower of the Indian Institute of Science and shout “Free Tibet”.

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