Another 'splittist'

From Time Magazine,Monday, Mar. 17, 2008
By Simon Robinson in Kathmandu

"Phuntsok arrived in this polluted, traffic-crammed city six days ago, dusty and weary after a 15-day journey from Tibet, a small duffle and a handful of clothes his only possessions. He was happy to have made it out, he says. Or rather he was happy until he phoned home to Lhasa to hear the news: Tibet was on fire and the same anger and frustration that had pushed Phuntsok to leave his homeland at the age of just 17 was now being turned against Chinese police and the shops and houses of recent Chinese migrants by his fellow Tibetans.
"I left too early," he says. "I wish I could be there with the protesters. I don't care if I die. I actually would like the opportunity to die alongside my relatives and friends."
In that first phone call home to his parents, he says, he learned that his 19-year-old cousin had joined the demonstrators and been shot dead by Chinese police. "I should have been there," says Phuntsok calmly."