Lhasa — Chinese government deployed large number of armed forces to Lhasa, closed the Potala Palace to pilgrims, closed roads and streets, and restricted the movement of Tibetans when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Lhasa, Tibet. Tibetan activists from the Students for a Free Tibet staged a hunger strike to protest against Chinese President Xi's visit to Lhasa, Tibet, and his oppressive policies in Tibet, which are erasing Tibetan culture, religion, and identity and destroying the environment.
The Chinese authorities responsible for managing the Potala Palace have announced that pilgrimages to the palace will be suspended from August 17, 2025 until the end of the event. The announcement states that “due to work related to the event, the Potala Palace will be closed from August 17 until the end of the event.”
The Chinese authorities in charge of road management also announced on August 17, 2025, that more than 12 roads and intersections would be closed, including the road leading to Norbulingka (the summer palace of His Holiness the Dalai Lama), Deckyi Road, North Lingkor Road, Beijing Middle Road (the road leading to Samye Monastery), the Nianre South Road, the Kangwang Dor Road.
Gonpo Kyi was detained in a hotel in Lhasa on August 20, 2025, the same day that Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Lhasa, the Capital of Tibet. Her movements were restricted, and she was beaten and tortured in the hotel. Driven by despair and anger, Gonpo Kyi jumped from the second floor of the hotel in a desperate act of protest against the mistreatment she was enduring. She suffered severe injuries to her waist and limbs and was in critical condition. After the incident, Chinese police denied Gonpo Kyi access to a hospital and the necessary medical care. Tibetans are suffering under Xi's cruel leadership, just like these two siblings and many other Tibetans.
Students for a Free Tibet staged a hunger strike outside the Chinese embassy in New York on August 20, 2025, to express their solidarity with Gonpo Kyi, who jumped from a building to escape arbitrary detention by the Chinese Communist Party and to protest against Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Lhasa, Tibet. Seven Tibetan youth activists from SFT age ranging from 19-30, completed their 24-Hour Solidarity Fast demanding justice for Gonpo Kyi and Dorje Tashi.
According to SFT, "For the past 24 hours these activists have been fasting outside the Chinese Consulate in NYC, inspired by the countless sit ins and hunger strikes that Gonpo Kyi has courageously staged for her brother Dorje Tashi, who is currently serving a life sentence in Chinese prison under fabricated charges."
Tsela Zoksang, 22, Campaigns Coordinator at Students for a Free Tibet said, "On August 20th, as Gonpo Kyi was held in arbitrary detention, Xi was parading around the very same city, the capital city of occupied Tibet, Lhasa. But Gonpo Kyi has shown us that even an injustice against a single person, and the courage of a single person to never back down, can completely unweave the entire propaganda narrative of the world’s largest and deadliest authoritarian regime. Gonpo Kyi’s story paints a very different picture of occupied Tibet than the one Xi tries to portray."
China-Tibet: The one-thing you need to know:
Over the past 70 decades, there has been ongoing political repression, social discrimination, economic marginalization, environmental destruction, and cultural assimilation, particularly due to Chinese migration to Tibet which is fueling intense resentment among the people of occupied Tibet.
The communist-totalitarian state of China began its invasion of Tibet in 1949, reaching complete occupation of the country in 1959. Since that time, more than 1.2 million people, 20% of the nation's population of six million, have died as a direct result of China's invasion and occupation. In addition, over 99% of Tibet's six thousand religious monasteries, temples, and shrines, have been looted or decimated resulting in the destruction of hundreds of thousands of sacred Buddhist scriptures.
Until 1949, Tibet was an independent Buddhist nation in the Himalayas which had little contact with the rest of the world. It existed as a rich cultural storehouse of the Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings of Buddhism. Religion was a unifying theme among the Tibetans -- as was their own language, literature, art, and world view developed by living at high altitudes, under harsh conditions, in a balance with their environment.
