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Statement by Taiwanese Collegian
on supporting "Marching for Tibet Independence"

March for Independence! March for justice and freedom!

On the eve of March 10, 1997, the Thirty-seventh anniversary of Tibet uprising, we, overseas Taiwanese students in North America, are calling all Taiwanese around the world to support and participate in the "Marching for Tibet Independence"!

Taiwanese and Tibetans both suffered from Chinese brutality: Fifty years ago on Feburary 28, 1947, Taiwanese protested against the tyrannous administration of the Chinese Nationalist army which occupied Taiwan on behalf of the Allies after Japanese surrendered in 1945. Chinese answered Taiwanese quest for freedom with massacre. Over twenty-thousand Taiwanese were tortured and killed without due process. In the subsequent forty years of brutal political and cultural suppression, the exiled Chinese Nationalists army put Taiwanese people in a spiritual Holocaust by depriving them of their unique Taiwanese heritages.

In 1959, Tibetans strove for freedom, but the effort was crashed by the Chinese Communist invasion. Over the next forty years, Tibetans have experienced one of the most unbearable situations of Human kind: the cultural genocide, the constant imprisonment of people of conscience, and the ethnic discrimination. Tibetans have been trodden upon by Chinese as second class human beings.

Today we march together to uphold our rights of being Taiwanese or Tibetans, and our rights to the indefeasible sovereignty of Taiwan or Tibet--our respective homeland. The occupation by foreign governments should not and will not extinguish our rights. Sword and bullets may kill our bodies, but will never deter the six million Tibetan and the twenty one million Taiwanese freedom searching souls. We want independence and we will overcome!

The march for Tibet independence is also a march for the justice of oppressed people all over the world, for this is a march of all people who refuse to be enslaved. Please join our crusade and stand strong with us. Let's march together for a new world where justice rolls on like a roaring river, rightousness like a never-failing stream (Amos 5:24), and freedom and diginity are no longer elements of "an unfinished dream".

Taiwanese Collegian

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International Tibet Independence Movement
PO Box 592 Fishers, Indiana 46038-0592 United States
e-mail: rangzen@aol.com