download the report - International Campaign for Tibet

INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR TIBET
There was also a peaceful protest on the same day by students at the Southwestern Nationalities
University in Chengdu.
These two peaceful vigils followed a peaceful sit-down protest on March 16 by around
200 Tibetan students on the campus of Northwest Nationalities University in Lanzhou,
the capital of Gansu province. In a message to a Tibetan in exile, one of the students
said: “We are staging our protest in a very peaceful manner and we are going to hold
a candlelight vigil tonight.” A foreign reporter who spoke to some of the students said
that some of the students knew people who had been killed during the previous
week’s protests in Tibet, and that they wanted to pay silent tribute to their courage.
On the evening of March 20, Tibetan students at the Qinghai Institute for Nationalities
started a silent sit-in in the western section of the campus.
According to TCHRD, nuns at Ratroe nunnery in Tawu in Kardze TAP in Sichuan
marched to the county government headquarters on April 2 to express their solidarity
with, and pray for those who lost their lives in protests across the Tibetan plateau.
People’s Armed Police and Public Security Bureau officers ordered the nuns to return
to their nunnery or be forcibly returned. The nuns dispersed and returned to Ratroe
nunnery. 9
In several cases, local religious leaders reportedly attempted to intervene to prevent
the escalation of protest. Examples of this include Bora in Gansu on March 18, Chentsa
in Qinghai on March 22, Rebkong in Qinghai on April 17 (see below), and Jomda in the
TAR on March 31. A senior lama from Wara monastery persuaded monks and laypeople
to stop protesting, according to reliable reports. A crowd had gathered after a quarrel
between some young Tibetans and Chinese shop-keepers, which led to monks
from the monastery joining local laypeople in a protest which involved calling for
the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet. Although the lama reportedly succeeded in calming
the situation, there was still a security buildup in the town.
Protestors in Amchok Bora, a primarily Tibetan nomadic area in Kanlho TAP, Gansu
province, and laypeople who demonstrated on March 18 were persuaded to calm
their demonstration when asked to do so by a respected lama and possibly other
monks too. According to a reliable source, they broke into Chinese shops in the area
and destroyed property, although they deliberately avoided violence against people in
their attacks on property. According to the same source, they stopped when they were
asked to do so by the lama and monks. The source also said that large numbers of Tibetan
nomads gathered in the area and were persuaded not to carry out protests by
33