NEW YORK—Shouting and chanting "Shame, shame China!" for hours on end, hundreds of protesters rallied before the Chinese Consulate here today from morning until late in the afternoon.
The protest was a response by the Tibetan community and supporters to reports of violence against protesters in Tibet by Chinese Communist police forces. According to unconfirmed reports from exiled Tibetans in India, police forces have left more than 100 people dead.
An annual rally usually marks the invasion and occupation of Tibet by Chinese forces, but the timing of this year's event was sparked this year by the reports of attacks on Thursday and Friday in Lhasa, Tibet's capital city.
According to Perna Dorje, a member of the organizing committee that coordinated Saturday's event, the rally was a call for help.
"We are trying to ask the United Nations and all the world to send an immediate fact-finding [mission] to Tibet to find out what happened," said Dorje. "Tibet is closed from the world now. And we need to release those prisoners they arrested, innocent Tibetans."
Dorje, who is from Tibet and lives in New York, added that the pursuit of the protesting Tibetans around the world are simple.
"We want to go back to our country. We want to live peacefully," said Dorje. "Because of the Chinese business, because of the Chinese power, the whole universe is not talking about what is happening in Tibet right now." The group was mostly peaceful after skirmishes with police earlier in the day, and the event was heavily attended and supported by a democracy organization called Initiatives for China.
Taking breaks from yelling slogans on the sidelines at the Chinese Consulate, some protesters said they had come out to the streets because they are worried about the situation in Tibet. The protests there have been the largest in 20 years, since the violent Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
"The situation in Tibet is very critical," said Takchu Ranpoche, a Tibetan who has lived in New York for the last five years. "We are looking for freedom and human rights in Tibet."
Orgyen Tashi, another Tibetan who lives in New York, said that today's protest was in place of the yearly protest against forceful Chinese rule of his home country. Tashi said that he and others are frustrated by the inaction of the United Nations' response.
"Until now they don't have a position, even though they know very well the situation, but they never do anything," said Tashi. "They [the Chinese Communist Party] are killing people because there is no democracy."
Eyewitnesses at the rally captured video and film footage earlier in the day of police scuffling with a small number of protesters. Estimates of several individuals who were at the scene said they saw approximately 5-10 people being arrested.
According to Detective Kenny Anderson in the New York Police Department's Deputy Commissioner's Public Information office, "Multiple people were arrested" at the protest, but official specific numbers were not yet available.
A second protest is planned to take place in front of the United Nations on Sunday.
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