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As of today, there is no sign of reprieve for those "trapped" inside of their own monasteries. Yesterday, a message made it from one monk held captive, to exiled Tibetans here in Dharamsala. The message was simple. It was repeated to me as: "to all foreigners, (basically everyone outside of China) please help us now. This is an emergency. If help doesn't arrive, we will continue to die. We have run out of supplies.)
 
News from many regions of Tibet, though perhaps not as dramatic to the same degree, reflects a growing urgency and desperation---of people living in occupied districts, towns, and villages. "Occupied" as in patrolled and controlled by heavily armed Chinese army and police. Besides living under constant fear and pressure and threat of bodily harm or death, people's access to basic resources has become difficult and freedom to travel---even within one's own town, limited, sometimes completely. For example, if you live on one side of a village, you may not be allowed to visit the other side.
 
A Tibetan woman I know in India has family in one of those occupied towns, the homeland of many political prisoners already, she said. (in part because of it's proximity to Lhasa.) She doesn't know whether her aging parents, many siblings, nieces and nephews are safe---or even alive. She cannot contact them, for risk of endangering their lives altogether. The larger tragedy is not this woman---and her family's--plight. It is that her story is typical. "That is what life is like in Tibet," she told me. Only now, thankfully, the world has begun to listen.