Wednesday-Night

See also China, Beijing Olympics and Olympic Protest Primer

15 April
Reason Lost in Angry Voices on Tibet
(Asia Sentinel) In the squabble between Chinese and western media, truth, as usual, is the first casualty
Never mind the Tibetans, the media war between China and the West has been so furious that editors appear to have forgotten what the protests were all about. Much as western journalists distorted Burma’s uprising last year from a plea to help the poverty-stricken into a single-minded demand for democracy, the Tibetans’ case has been hijacked by a xenophobic Xinhua on the one hand and a Free Tibet-spouting, China-doubting, western press on the other.
April 11
Gwynne Dyer: Controversial flame has never burned brightly
(New Zealand Herald) What’s actually colliding here are two irreconcilable views of the world. For almost all Chinese, the turmoil in Tibet is a threat to national unity. Only in the past century have Tibet and the Turkish-speaking, Muslim province of Sinkiang come to be seen as a necessary part of that national unity, but they are now.
Chinese propaganda insists that the local people support that consensus, but it makes no difference if they don’t. They have to stay, because national unity is at stake.
For almost everybody else, China and Tibet is obviously a colonial relationship, and it’s perfectly natural for the Tibetans to seek independence. They won’t get it this time round, and they may never get it, but why would you be surprised that they try? Indeed, why wouldn’t you support them?
Foreign governments will never support Tibet’s independence, because they depend on China’s trade and they value “stability” in China above all else. Foreign individuals are under no such constraints, and the Tour of the Torch is giving them a lot of opportunities to show their feelings.
April 10
Massive Chinese investment in Tibet produces few results
(The Economist) For a leadership that has committed to the development of China’s backward western provinces, recent riots and continuing tensions in Tibet have been a huge embarrassment to say the least. The violent outbursts of hatred towards Han Chinese and Hui Muslim businesses in Lhasa have shattered the façade of stability secured at the cost of record amounts of transfer payments from Beijing and massive commercial investments in the “autonomous region”. Though the harmonious co-existence of different ethnic groups remains one of the centrepieces of state propaganda, it is now clear that rapid economic development in Tibet has bypassed the overwhelming majority of Tibetans who remain poor, disgruntled and suspicious of Beijing’s largesse.
April 1
China issues wild conspiracy claims against Dalai Lama
Chris Buckley, Reuters
BEIJING — China accused Tibetan groups on Tuesday of planning suicide attacks following last month’s riots and protests but did not answer key questions about its evidence for such allegations.
March 27
Bush calls Hu to urge Tibet talks
(BBC) US President George W Bush has urged China to begin dialogue with Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
Mr Bush called his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao to raise his concerns about the unrest and to urge him to ease access for journalists and diplomats.
Tibet: Her Pain, My Shame
Tang Danhong 唐丹鸿，(born in 1965 ) is a poet and documentary filmmaker from Chengdu, Sichuan. She has made several documentaries in and about Tibet since the 1990s. She wrote the following essay this week and published it on her own blog (hosted outside of China), partially translated by CDT:
… For more than a decade, I have frequently entered Tibet and often stayed there for a long time, traveling or working. I have met all kinds of Tibetans, from youngsters on the streets, folk artists, herders on the grasslands, voodoo doctors in mountain villages, to ordinary cadres in state agencies, street vendors in Lhasa, monks and cleaners in monasteries, artists and writers…Among those Tibetans I have met, some frankly told me that Tibet was a small country several decades ago, with its own government, religious leader, currency and military; some stay silent, with a sense of helplessness, and avoid talking with me, a Han Chinese, afraid this is an awkward subject. Some think that no matter what happened, it is an historical fact that Chinese and Tibetans had a long history of exchanges with each other, and the relationship must be carefully maintained by both sides. Some were angered by the railway project, and by those roads named “Beijing Road,” “Jiangsu Road,” “Sichuan-Tibet road,” but others accept them happily. Some say that you (Han Chinese) invest millions in Tibet but you also got what you wanted and even more; some say you invest in the development but you also destroy, and what you destroy is exactly what we treasure….. What I want to say here is that no matter how different these people are, they have one thing in common: They have their own view of history, and a profound religious belief.
March 25
Missing: monks who defied Beijing
(The Independent) They were the 15 youthful Tibetan monks – three still in their teens – who sparked a rebellion by daring to speak out against China’s repression of their homeland.
The reaction of the authorities, desperate to snuff out the most serious uprising against Chinese rule for almost half a century, was rapid and brutal. The group was detained on the spot, with eyewitnesses reporting that several of the monks suffered severe beatings as they were arrested and taken away. They have not been seen since.
March 23
(NYT) Chinese Scholars Urge Dialogue With Dalai Lama
The petition, which was signed by more than two dozen writers, journalists and scholars contains 12 recommendations which, taken together, represent a sharp break from the Chinese government’s response to the wave of demonstration that have swept Tibetan areas of the country in recent days.
March 21, 2008
(RCI) The government has issued a list of 21 rioters in the recent turmoil in Tibet and posted their photos taken from video cameras and security footage on the Internet. They’re accused of endangering national security, beating, smashing, looting and arson. The demonstrations began peacefully on March 10, the anniversary of a Tibetan revolt against Chinese rule in 1959 but erupted into violence four days later. China says 18 “innocent people” were killed but Tibetan exile groups put the true figure at about 100. The Chinese government blames exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama for having orchestrated the violence, a claim denied by U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is visiting him in Dharmsala, India. Mrs. Pelosi invited freedom-loving people around the world to speak out against “China’s oppression in China and Tibet.”
Fears of contagion from Tibet
(Economist.com) China fears that the protests in Tibet could spread
Before the recent outbreak of unrest in Tibet, China had calculated that the main political threat to the Olympics would come from isolated, small scale protests by activists (including Tibetans, practitioners of Falun Gong and opponents of China’s policies in Sudan) in Beijing itself. Now it is scrambling to suppress Olympic-related unrest across a broad swathe of territory. The region may be sparsely populated, but China is aware that Tibet exerts an enormous emotional pull in the West. To avoid a protest-marred games, it will have to be wary.
(CBC) Thousands of Chinese troops descend on Tibetan areas
Thousands of troops were converging on Tibetan areas on Friday as the Chinese government stepped up its efforts to find protesters involved in last week’s riots.
Riot police arrived on foot, by truck and by helicopter, blanketing a large part of Tibet and surrounding areas, the Associated Press reported.
The massive mobilization of troops was an attempt to regain control after the recent protests in the capital of Lhasa — the broadest demonstrations against Chinese rule in decades.
Dalai Lama: ‘I am prepared to face China. I will go to Beijing’
As crisis over Tibet deepens, Dalai Lama makes extraordinary offer to negotiate directly with President Hu Jintao
On Visit, Pelosi Offers Support to Dalai Lama
The visit by Ms. Pelosi, accompanied by nine other members of Congress, most of them Democrats, was arranged some time ago as part of a visit to India. As it happened, though, it came on the heels of the largest protests in Tibet in nearly two decades, followed by a broad crackdown by China, and almost nonstop demonstrations in solidarity in this town, where the Tibetan government in exile has its base.
The timing could not have been better, at least for the Americans. It was unclear what the visit would yield for Tibetans or even for the Dalai Lama, other than a symbolic boost. Certainly Ms. Pelosi’s visit received more coverage from the news media than it might otherwise have; the protests in Tibet have drawn reporters from around the world to this small Indian hill town.
March 20
China steps up Tibetan crackdown
(BBC) China’s quandary over Tibet’s future
Could Tibet gain independence or greater autonomy?
(RCI) CANADA URGES RESTRAINT IN TIBET:
As protestors demonstrated outside Canada’s Parliament Buildings in Ottawa today, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told them, through an emissary, that Canada has urged China to show restraint in dealing with the uprising in Tibet. Some of the pro-Tibetan activists demanded a Canadian boycott of this summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing, as a response to China’s crackdown in Tibet. No country has, so far, threatened such a measure. Organizers of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Canada are warning that any political boycott of Beijing’s Olympic Games over unrest in Tibet would only end up hurting the athletes. The Canadian Organizing Committee says it’s monitoring the growing political controversy surrounding the upcoming Summer Games in China. The committee is also opposed to any boycott-type protest against China. Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee says there have been no government calls for a boycott of the Beijing Games. But at least one rights group has suggested the more limited protest of boycotting the opening ceremonies. Canada was among the Western countries that refused to compete in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
March 19
China moves to quell spreading Tibet protests
Chinese officials evicted all foreigners from areas with large Tibetan populations Wednesday and sent in paramilitary forces in a bid to control the spread of protests over China’s rule of Tibet. The deployment of increasing numbers of security forces has raised concerns of potential human rights abuses. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
(BBC) Key places and events in Tibet unrest
Protests by monks in Lhasa marking the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule have turned into more than a week of riots and clashes with security forces.
Protests by ethnic Tibetans have been reported in at least 25 places in Tibet and neighbouring provinces in western China, although not all of them can be independently verified.