Tenzin Tsundue, Tibetan poet and activist, moderated the talk.

“Tension was already building up in Tibet even before that fateful day. There was excessive police patrolling since January. There was also talk that the Chinese police were being stationed in Lhasa,” said Kunsang.

Kunsang left Tibet on March 26 and reached Nepal two days later. He sought asylum in Dharamsala and remained in Nepal for another month. Then, walking across the Himalayas, he reached India in July, in a rare case of evasion of the tight security at the border. What was the motivation behind his risking his life to cross the border? Simple enough. The fast approaching Beijing Olympics.

“After March 10, the entire state of Tibet was in chaos. It took us a lot of time to actually realise that we had been completely cordoned off by the Chinese Army and the police forces. There were random shootouts — so many people fell to the bullets in front of my own eyes. It was only after the smoke from the tear gas shells fired by the Chinese army subsided that we realised that many of our own kin, brothers and sisters had died. All we were left with were the blood-stained streets. All dead bodies and wounded people were immediately removed by the security forces,” Kunsang said.