March 10 marked the 53rd anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day. In commemoration, the Tibetan Association of Santa Fe held a march to the plaza Saturday morning.

After the recent self-immolations, Tibetans in Santa Fe are deeply saddened by the extreme acts of protest. Most recently an 18-year-old Kirti monk died in a self-immolation protest on March 10 behind Ngaba county military camp in eastern Tibet. “It’s a very very emotional and sad story that our brothers and sisters are dying there because our freedom is not there in Tibet,” Dorjee Gyalsten, a local Tibetan, tells SFR.  Tibetan Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay said, in a statement on the Tibetan National Uprising Day, that “The self-immolations are an emphatic rejection of the empty promises of the so-called ‘socialist paradise.’” The promised paradise Sangay mentions was the liberation China promised to Tibet in 1949.

After the march on Saturday, Tibetans and supporters returned to the Tibetan Center on Hickox Street for speeches, a documentary on the current situation in Tibet and a message by Lobsang Sangay, the political head of the Tibetan people.

Read his full statement here:  Statement of Kalon Tripa Dr. Lobsang Sangay