Iron Hare 2011 – flames of resistance
house in division 2 of Kharsar township was arrested for the same reason by officers from Sichuan provincial State Security Bureau in November 2011. He is presumed to be in Chengdu, but nothing more is known of his situation.
January 18th On the morning of January 23rd, the monks of Namtso monastery, near Me’uruma township, and several hundred laypeople, naked from the waist up, gathered on the road called Serday Ketak in Me’uruma township, reciting Mani Mantra and eating dry Tsampa. Around noon they returned to the township in a candle lit procession. There they were confronted by a large number of police and soldiers blocking their path, but they continued, and their march turned into a protest, as they started shouting slogans for the long life of the Dalai Lama and freedom in Tibet. The security forces started to beat and arrest people at random and disperse them. Many Namtso monks and laypeople were arrested, loaded into a truck and taken away. Security forces maintained a clampdown in Me’ruma township the following day, and local nomads going to attend the annual Monlam prayer festival starting at Kirti monastery on January 25th (which goes on for 15 days) were not allowed to travel into the county town, beaten and arrested. Among those known to have been arrested that day are Namtso monks including the senior Lama Pema Dorjey Chang, 31 year old Logya of the Drukto Tsang household in Toru village, under Namtso, and his sister Jampa, 35 year old Losang Keyo of Jigme Tsang in no.1 division, and 43 year old Tseten of Tseten Tsang, Tsepe Dorjey, Namdon, 34 year old Dorjey of Awa Tsang, and many other laypeople. Dorjey’s brother, the 184