TYC President Tsewang Rigzin is destined to "overtake his master". As the current president of the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), Tsewang Rigzin recently had an interview with the Milan-based Italian newspaper, Corriere Della Sera, and voiced stunning words that left people gasping with awe and bewilderment. For the cause of "Tibetan independence", he said, the use of human bomb for revenge is a direction of development.
In contrast, his predecessor Gaisang Pucong, former TYC chairman, only threatened to use all means, violence or nonviolence, for the sake of their cause. Violence, revenge and all kinds of atrocities that match to their "statements" have been voiced freely. Since its inception, TYC in the people's memory has never hesitated to display its inclination to violence.
Among its recent moves, TYC has held a series of training courses on guerrilla warfare tactics and detonating skills, constantly turned to such violent actions as beating, smashing, looting and committing arson, and even harshly assaulted handicapped Olympic torchbearers before the eyes of the world's people... All these attemps are by no means accidental.
TYC, dubbed as the daring vanguard for "Tibetan independence", represents the greatest and most dynamic force among the Tibetan societies and organizations in exile. It was formed in India in 1970 under the blessing of the Dalai Lama. Shortly afterwards, some of its members claimed to resort to violence forever and its president then even clamored to use all means including violence for the sake of the interests of Tibetans. To this end, they plotted the Lhasa riots in 1987, 1988 and 1989.
With the passage of time, however, TYC has turned increasingly more violent when the cause of "Tibetan independence" they had schemed developed slowly and the situation remained unfavorable to them. During riots in Lhasa on March 14, they burned or stabbed innocent civilians to death and set fire to stores and stalls. Moreover, they, in a bid to inflict greater casualties upon people, stored more than 100 guns, tens of thousands of bullets, several thousand kilograms of explosives and tens of thousands of detonators, as reported by lamas and ordinary people. Some ringleaders even clamored that they were ready to sacrifice additional 100 Tibetan lives to achieve a "thorough victory".