Thread: Tibet protest in a perspective.

Originally Posted by Ray

Dalai Lama wants autonomy for Tibet.

Does he have a case?

Sir, two very different definitions of autonomy.

1) Both sides can't even agree what Tibet is. The Chinese views it as the current provincial boundaries. The Dali Lama and Monks views it as the Tibetan enclave which includes large portions of 3 neighbouring provinces.

2) The Chinese views autonomy as meaning Tibetan administrators of Chinese rule. The Dali Lama believes in the restoration of the Feudal elite paying tribute to Beijing.

3) Tibet for the Tibetans and the CCP should evict all Han-Chinese from Tibet ... and the surrounding enclaves in neighbouring provinces.

Originally Posted by Ray

Why are the Chinese so afraid of the Dalai Lama?

Well, Sir, he maybe a Buddist willing to shun all material things and he maybe a Pacifist to the core ... but he's a damned good bridge player (card game) and I don't want to play poker against the man.

Originally Posted by Ray

He claims to be a Man of Peace as the Chinese claim that they are a Nation that promotes Peaceful Coexistence!

Sir, Stalin once asked how many divisions the Pope have. While on the surface that quote would indicate that Stalin view little of a Holy figure, the flip side is that it takes a man of Stalin's calibre to ignore the Pope. In this case, Mao Tse-Tung died a long time ago. Deng Xia Peng could stare down the Dali Lama but no one else in the Politburo is of those calibre.

Until the CCP is in power, there's little hope for Tibetians. So the main aim of the world should be to get rid of the CCP in whatever way they can.

Tibetans appeal for world's help, but they're resigned to getting little

The Associated Press
Published: March 22, 2008

DHARMSALA, India: Nearly six decades of struggle against the might of China have taught the Tibetans one thing: Ask the world for little, expect less.

As Tibetans rose up in recent weeks against China's harsh rule over the Himalayan region and Beijing sent forces to quell the protests, Tibet's government-in-exile sent its envoys to far-flung capitals with appeals for help.

But guided by the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, they kept their requests modest, knowing that few countries are willing to cross China, particularly with the world counting on the emerging superpower to keep the global economy ticking as the United States appears headed into a recession.

"His Holiness says we have to be realistic," said Tenzin Taklha, a senior aide to the 72-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner who has come to embody the Tibetan struggle since he fled to India in 1959 in the wake of a failed uprising against China.

From the Tibetan exile leaders there were no calls for sanctions, like those imposed when Myanmar suppressed pro-democracy protests last year, or even a boycott of this summer's Beijing Olympics.

It's an approach that reflects the pragmatism of the Dalai Lama, who has long sought an accommodation based on his "Middle Way" dialogue with Beijing aimed at autonomy for Tibetans under Chinese rule.

Instead, the Tibetans appealed for international pressure on China to act with restraint, to open the area to international investigators and the media and for organizations like the International Red Cross to be allowed in to ensure the wounded get treatment.

The Dalai Lama has said he had received reports that many Tibetans wounded in clashes were not going to Chinese hospitals for treatment, fearing arrest.

"Specific things are very difficult. No one is going to send in a peacekeeping force," said Taklha.

The Tibetans have, however, won the moral support of many nations.


On Friday, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, lent her voice, calling China's crackdown "a challenge to the conscience of the world."

Pelosi was the first major foreign official to meet the Dalai Lama since the start of the unrest. She visited him in Dharmsala, the hilltop town in northern India where he has his headquarters.

"If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China's oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world," Pelosi told thousands of cheering Tibetans, including monks and schoolchildren.

But it is difficult for most countries to do more than call on China to show restraint, finding themselves walking a tightrope between their sympathy for the Tibetans and their very real economic and strategic needs to maintain good relations with Beijing.


China reacts harshly against countries offering overt support to the Dalai Lama, whom it accuses of masterminding the uprising in an attempt to secure Tibet's independence and undermine the Olympic Games.


China this week expressed "grave concern" over a planned meeting between British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Dalai Lama.


And last year China temporarily barred U.S. warships from docking in Hong Kong after U.S. President George W. Bush presented the Dalai Lama with the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress' highest civilian honor.


No country faces this dilemma more than India, which hosts the Tibetan exiles but now has its closest ties to Beijing since the two Asian neighbors fought a 1962 border war. Last year, two-way trade reached US$37 billion (€24.8 billion).

India has largely allowed the Tibetans to protest peacefully, although it detained several dozen who planned to march to Tibet to protest the Olympics. New Delhi said it would not tolerate actions that embarrassed Beijing.

"Rubbing China's nose in it now when they are so sensitive about the Olympics, to me, would be bad statesmanship," said C. Uday Bhaskar, a leading New Delhi-based strategic analyst.

And some argue it's only international pressure that has stopped China from completely crushing the Tibetans long ago.

Still, for the many Tibetan exiles who lack the patience of the Dalai Lama, the absence of concrete action from the international community, particularly the United Nations, is galling.

"We want justice from the U.N. It is the only place where we can go to seek justice for the people killed in Tibet," said Zamba Tshering, 26, a Tibetan exile protesting outside the world body's offices in Katmandu, Nepal.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on both sides to show restraint earlier in the week, but the world body has little interest in getting involved — perhaps an acknowledgment of China's status as one of the Security Council's five veto-wielding members.

The Security Council has never debated the Tibet issue and it has not been raised in the broader General Assembly since 1965.

"The U.N. has so many procedures, so sometimes genuine issues don't come up," said Sonam Dagpo, a senior official in the exile's Department of Information and International Relations.

Others were less tactful.

"When it comes to dollars, everyone wants dollars. When it comes to human rights, it is shoved under the carpet," said Tsewang Rigzin, the leader of the Tibetan Youth Congress.

___

Associated Press Writers Sam Dolnick in New Delhi and Binaj Gurubacharya in Katmandu, Nepal contributed to this report.

Tibetans appeal for world's help, but they're resigned to getting little - International Herald Tribune

Does some up how the world views the Tibet Protest.

Beijing braces for worldwide demonstrations over Tibet

Aileen McCabe, Asia Correspondent, Canwest News Service
Published: Friday, March 21, 2008

SHANGHAI -- China now has the lid on so tight in Tibet and the surrounding regions that its boast this week that "peace reigns" may soon be true, but probably not for long.

Lhasa, which was the scene of the deadly riots a week ago that sparked anti-Chinese demonstrations inside China and around the world, is locked down.

Massive numbers of troops continue to pour into Sichuan and Gansu provinces, flooding the areas where significant Tibetan populations have staged demonstrations all week calling for Tibet's independence. The highly visible presence of soldiers on the streets is ensuring an eerie calm.

In Beijing, however, the prevailing mood is almost certainly more restive.

Until trouble flared in Tibet, the biggest problems the Chinese government faced as it stepped up preparations for this August's Olympic Games were worries about air quality, which it is working hard to address, and the "pesky" question of its support for the government in Darfur. That really only amounted to a "Hollywood moment" of concern when director Steven Spielberg bowed out as artistic director for the opening ceremonies in protest.

But even if the demonstrations in China subside, Beijing is well aware Tibet is not going to go away as an issue for the government in the little more than four months left before the Games begin.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi showed that when she addressed a thousand Tibetan exiles who greeted her when she visited the Dalai Lama Friday in Djaramshai, India.

"The situation in Tibet is a challenge to the conscience of the world," she told the crowd. "When we return home we will take the message of what we saw here. When we return home we will try to meet the challenge of conscience that Tibet offers."

The peripatetic Dalai Lama will also play his part in keeping the world focused on his homeland when he visits British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Prince Charles in Britain in May. The Chinese government has already said it is "seriously concerned" Brown agreed to meet with the Nobel Peace laureate who it says incited the Tibetan uprising.

But what is likely to keep the Tibetan independence flame truly stoked in the coming weeks is the Olympic Torch Relay that begins on Monday with the lighting ceremony in Greece.The ambitious route the Chinese planned as the triumphant kick-off for their Olympic "coming-out" party passes through 19 countries.

The itinerary for it listed on the Beijing Games website is already being consulted as the timetable for upcoming anti-China demonstrations.

China has managed to shut down Mount Everest to prevent protests as the torchbearers ascend the summit sometime in May. In cities such as St. Petersburg, Dar es Salaam, Muscat and Pyongyang, China can probably count on the governments to make sure the run goes smoothly.

But in the likes of London, Paris, San Francisco and Canberra, China has no power to stop the inevitable.

Demonstrations were already being planned before Tibet went on the boil.

A coalition of American-based Tibetan groups, for instance, has long been preparing for the relay and this week's troubles have only added urgency to their appeal for a massive turnout along the relay route.

"Sign up to come to San Francisco and be a voice for six million Tibetans who continue to suffer under Chinese rule," says the groups website, sftorch2008.org. "When the torch relay reaches San Francisco on April 9th, China will be in the global spotlight like never before. We have an unprecedented opportunity to shine this spotlight on Tibet."

Canwest News Service
Beijing braces for worldwide demonstrations over Tibet

Unlike democratic countries, it is easy for a totalitarian country to impose a shroud over the events and at the same time undertake repressive measures to stifle and snuff dissent or even an insurgency. If the world cannot get independent eyewitness accounts through the international media, stories coming out of atrocities will not get the response and disgust that is essential. Thus, whatever the totalitarian State informs will be taken as correct, even if sceptically. With no international mobilisation the issue will die a natural death. And it will be the end of the issue.

In China's case, the economic pandora's box that has opened up makes all shy away from giving the issue the due that other similar issues bring forth, like the Myanmar issue, which in no way is any less that what is occurring in Tibet.

Indeed, as Pelosi has stated the current issue is a challenge to the moral conscience of the world. Ignoring the Tibetan protest would only allow other nations to adopt similar modes to stifle protests and none would have the right to object. In short, human rights will be dumped as an useless talking point.

In the same breath, it would not mean that the Tibetans are without fault. There may have been grave reasons to protest, but to go on a rampage and take out the ire on innocent civilians does not make their case easier to sympathise with. Brutality invites brutality and the State has its organised police and military apparatus to wreak havoc on the Tibetan people. In short, again the innocents will be the one who will face the brunt!

The Chinese will be least perturbed about the outcome of the protest since they will with a heavy hand crush it. They are also not concerned what the world feels about China. The very fact that they have twisted the arm of the US repeatedly whenever the US commented on China, is an indicator that she does find US and US or international opinion worthy of contempt.

The world needs the Chinese market and China knows it. Therefore, she couldn't care less who says what about China.

The events has however put a gloom over the Olympics.

Unfortunate.

[QUOTE]

Originally Posted by Officer of Engineers

Sir, two very different definitions of autonomy.

1) Both sides can't even agree what Tibet is. The Chinese views it as the current provincial boundaries. The Dali Lama and Monks views it as the Tibetan enclave which includes large portions of 3 neighbouring provinces.

2) The Chinese views autonomy as meaning Tibetan administrators of Chinese rule. The Dali Lama believes in the restoration of the Feudal elite paying tribute to Beijing.

3) Tibet for the Tibetans and the CCP should evict all Han-Chinese from Tibet ... and the surrounding enclaves in neighbouring provinces.

A knotty problem.

Well, Sir, he maybe a Buddist willing to shun all material things and he maybe a Pacifist to the core ... but he's a damned good bridge player (card game) and I don't want to play poker against the man.

)

Sir, Stalin once asked how many divisions the Pope have. While on the surface that quote would indicate that Stalin view little of a Holy figure, the flip side is that it takes a man of Stalin's calibre to ignore the Pope. In this case, Mao Tse-Tung died a long time ago. Deng Xia Peng could stare down the Dali Lama but no one else in the Politburo is of those calibre.

The people who can survive the machinations and Machiavellian intrigues of Communist political power play are people who can face all eventuality. To imagine the same people can sneer at the US or tell the US to take a hike. How many countries or leaders can do that?

One cannot ridicule the US and get away. China and its leaders can while others freeze in their shoes.

As I said before, I do not underestimate the Chinese Communist or China.

gamercube,

the main aim of the world should be to get rid of the CCP in whatever way they can.

i assure you that if the PRC went to being a liberal democracy, they would still overwhelmingly want to keep tibet within PRC borders. you don't see hawaii going independent after all.

Is it really surprising to find troops shooting into a mob that's wielding stones, bottles and knives and randomly killing people?

Witnesses to Tibet violence describe scenes of horror - Los Angeles Times
From the Los Angeles Times
Witnesses to Tibet violence describe scenes of horror
Protesters in Lhasa randomly beat and killed ethnic Chinese, and troops fired live ammunition into mostly defenseless crowds.
By Barbara Demick
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 22, 2008

BEIJING — On a cloudless day near the top of the world, Swiss tourist Claude Balsiger had just finished a late-morning cup of tea and stepped out onto the streets of Tibet's capital. Buddhist monks had been marching against Chinese rule all week, but today seemed calmer.

Suddenly, Tibetan youths started hurling paving stones at police, who tried to protect themselves with their riot shields.

Over the next few hours, the odor of tear gas and fires replaced the scent of incense wafting from backpacker cafes. The intense Himalayan light was blacked out by smoke. And in the days that followed, violence would spread beyond Lhasa to ethnic Tibetan villages deep inside China and to Chinese embassies worldwide.

China has barred Western journalists from entering Tibet and ethnic Tibetan areas. But interviews with foreign witnesses and Chinese residents, as well as blog postings by Tibetans too frightened to be interviewed, show that during three crucial hours on March 14, woefully unprepared police fled, allowing rioters to burn and smash much of Lhasa's commercial center.

Tibetans randomly beat and killed Chinese solely on the basis of their ethnicity: a young motorcyclist bludgeoned in the head with paving stones and probably killed; a teenage boy in school uniform being dragged by a mob. When authorities did regroup, paramilitary troops fired live ammunition into the crowds. Witnesses did not see protesters armed with anything other than stones, bottles of gasoline or a few traditional Tibetan knives.

Despite a massive deployment of Chinese forces, the protests show no signs of abating. In New Delhi on Friday, Tibetan exiles stormed the Chinese Embassy. And China posted a "most wanted" list of 21 alleged rioters, featuring grainy photographs taken from video shot by a hidden camera.

The death toll of Tibetans had risen to 99 as of Friday, with a 16-year-old girl being shot by police in China's Sichuan County, the Tibetan government in exile said.

Chinese authorities say 19 Chinese have been killed in Lhasa: one police officer and the rest civilians.

Since their homeland was invaded by Chinese communists in 1951, Tibetans have risen up periodically against Beijing's rule. Led by the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist monk and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, their movement has been largely nonviolent. There hadn't been a substantial uprising in Lhasa since the late 1980s, giving the city a reputation as a laid-back Shangri-La.

"Tibetans usually are so calm and friendly, but suddenly they were insane," said Balsiger, 25, a teacher. "They were howling like wolves. . . . It was so brutal, so violent."

March 10, Monday

Everybody is girded for demonstrations today. It is the 49th anniversary of the failed Tibetan revolt in which their leader, the Dalai Lama, fled into exile in India. This year the protests are expected to be bigger because activists hope to use the upcoming Summer Olympics in Beijing to press their case.

Tibetan demonstrations are well-choreographed: Monks, who ran Tibet in pre-communist times, usually take the lead while laypeople try to protect them.

At 6 p.m., a parade of about 300 red-robed monks leaves the 15th century Drepung Monastery, five miles west of downtown Lhasa. Blocked by police from reaching the city, the monks sit for several hours at a checkpoint before dispersing.

At dusk, students and monks stage a second demonstration in the center of Lhasa, making a circle around Barkhor Square and joining hands. The square is filled with uniformed and plainclothes security officials. A young Dutch couple watch police take away six or seven demonstrators.

"Everybody is afraid to speak," the Dutch tourists, Steve Dubois and Ulrike Lakiere, write later on a blog. "Even us, free-born people, not for our sake, but for that of the Tibetans who can get in trouble just by speaking with us."

Balsiger recalls meeting a young Tibetan brother and sister at a cafe. Although he and they have no common language, he understands that they live in fear of Chinese undercover police. They nervously show him that they wear images of the Dalai Lama, which are banned, on strings around their necks, hidden under their clothes.

March 11, Tuesday

Nine monks emerge from the Sera Monastery north of Lhasa carrying a banned Tibetan flag and are almost immediately dragged away by police.

Several hundred more monks come out to demand their release. The paramilitary Chinese People's Liberation Army police disperses the crowd with tear gas.

March 12, Wednesday

Many stores in Lhasa are closed. Tsering Woeser, a Tibetan poet who writes a blog, says two monks at Drepung Monastery slit their wrists in suicide attempts, and monks at Sera Monastery start a hunger strike. Water supplies are cut to many of the monasteries.

A foreign tourist wanders into Sera Monastery at 3 p.m., just as hundreds of monks are rushing out, their hands in the air and in obvious distress. Police surround them.

"They were grabbing monks, kicking and beating them. One monk was kicked in the stomach right in front of us and then beaten on the ground," the tourist later tells BBC.

Paramilitary forces block roads leading out of the remote Ganden Monastery. The Chutsang Nunnery is also surrounded.

March 13, Thursday

Roadblocks are in place around Lhasa. Thousands of paramilitary forces are reported to be searching houses for photographs of the Dalai Lama.

March 14, Friday

Stores reopen. The trouble appears to have passed. But about 11:30 a.m., as the morning prayer finishes at Ramoche Temple, a small Buddhist shrine up a pedestrian street from the main square, police block monks from marching. This time, onlookers start throwing stones at police.

Trucks carrying reinforcements speed down Beijing East Street, the main drag. As soon as police climb out, the stones start flying again. About 20 protesters in their teens and 20s are cheered on by several hundred older Tibetans.

Rioters use their bare hands to pry paving stones loose and hurl them with such ferocity that they crack police shields. The police officers, some of them teenagers themselves, hurry into an alley for cover. The enraged crowd begins to vent its anger on ethnic Chinese passersby.

"At first it was sort of a game. You throw the rocks and you run away," Susan Witmore, a Canadian business consultant who had given herself a trip to Tibet as a 60th birthday present, later recalls. "But then the scene turned incredibly ugly."

A young Chinese motorcyclist is struck by stones. Witmore utters a silent scream to the man, "Keep moving!" but the motorcyclist stops, as if to reason with the mob. Soon his flashy gold helmet is off and the mob is pounding his head with stones and pipes. Witmore, who was watching from the lobby of her hotel, retreats into the courtyard in horror. Other tourists say later that they believe the man was killed.

Balsiger sees the crowd pull a Chinese-looking man off a bicycle. A teenage boy is bludgeoned on the head, but as he staggers, bleeding on the pavement, barely conscious, a tall foreign man steps in and pulls him to safety.

Police flee, and by early afternoon the mobs have the run of the city. They go after Chinese shopkeepers, who these days dominate the commercial life of Lhasa.

"They thought we Han Chinese people were coming to steal from their rice bowls," says the manager of Top of the World Hotel on Ramoche Street, near the temple. She cowers in her courtyard as the crowd sets fire to many of her neighbors' businesses.

The mob is more interested in destroying than looting. Witnesses see cellphones, bicycles, clothing, food and furniture smashed along Beijing East Street. Cars are overturned and set on fire, often topped with burning Chinese flags.

Riots spread to the Muslim quarter, targeting the Hui, Chinese Muslims who have been opening businesses in Tibet. Rioters smash holes through metal shop gates and pour in gasoline. A Muslim family later describes to Chinese journalists how they hid in a bathroom as flames spread around them. The main gate of the mosque is set on fire, but the mob doesn't get inside.

It is not until 4 p.m. that Chinese authorities venture back into the center of Lhasa. What happens next is unclear, because by this time the city is under a strict curfew. According to Tibetan sources, the Public Security Bureau lifts an order restricting the use of live ammunition by the paramilitary forces.

Tibetans say many people are killed in front of the main temple, the Jokhang, and that families come to collect the bodies late at night, offering prayers and strewing traditional white prayer scarves.

"Many of those killed were young Tibetans, both boys and girls," a rioter tells Radio Free Asia. "Those who are dead sacrificed their lives for 6 million Tibetans. My disappointment is that we were not armed."

Amid the raging violence, some Tibetans do step in to help the beleaguered ethnic Chinese.

A 24-year-old Chinese assistant at an optometry shop recalls how a teenage neighbor escorted her home, only to be chastised by a Tibetan security guard who asked, "How can you come back with a Han Chinese?"

The Tibetan girl "was horrified," recalled her Chinese friend. "In her eyes were confusion, perplexion, sorrow and mostly astonishment."

March 15, Saturday

Overnight, soldiers move into the center of Lhasa. By the end of the day, they have the city under control. But protests break out elsewhere. At Labrang Monastery in Xiahe, 750 miles to the northeast, more than 1,000 Tibetans march against the Chinese.

March 16, Sunday

Protesters carrying photos of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan flag stage protests in Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces. In remote Aba County in Sichuan, Tibetans attack a police station and set fire to a market, firetrucks and police cars. Police reportedly fire into the crowd, killing at least eight.

March 17, Monday

Protesters try to storm Chinese embassies and consulates around the world.

"Chinese people have to realize we can't bear any more," says Tenzin Lama, 25, a Tibetan student demonstrating in London. "We will give up our lives to fight for our beliefs. Tibetans won't stop."

barbara.demick@latimes.com

Jia Han, Cathy Gao and Eliot Gao of The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.

Originally Posted by Officer of Engineers

Sir, Stalin once asked how many divisions the Pope have. While on the surface that quote would indicate that Stalin view little of a Holy figure, the flip side is that it takes a man of Stalin's calibre to ignore the Pope. In this case, Mao Tse-Tung died a long time ago. Deng Xia Peng could stare down the Dali Lama but no one else in the Politburo is of those calibre.

LCol,

The Dalai Lama may have stature in the international community, but within China itself he has less far less moral stature than probably even Falun Gong. The CCP has been propagandarizing against the former rulers of Tibet for 50 years, emphasizing the feudal aspects of old Tibetan society, especially the use of land bonded serfs. Whether accurate or not, it has been effective, due no doubt in part to nationalism.

Unless my sense of the popular opinions from my childhood in China is completely out dated, most Han Chinese regard Tibet as a miniature Taiwan problem. They have no sympathy for "autonomy" or Dalai's return what so ever.

Originally Posted by citanon

LCol,

The Dalai Lama may have stature in the international community, but within China itself he has less far less moral stature than probably even Falun Gong. The CCP has been propagandarizing against the former rulers of Tibet for 50 years, emphasizing the feudal aspects of old Tibetan society, especially the use of land bonded serfs. Whether accurate or not, it has been effective, due no doubt in part to nationalism.

Unless my sense of the popular opinions from my childhood in China is completely out dated, most Han Chinese regard Tibet as a miniature Taiwan problem. They have no sympathy for "autonomy" or Dalai's return what so ever. The Tibetans wil be, and are getting crushed.

I should add that while most Chinese are very unsympathetic to the Tibetan independence cause, people in recent years have become much more supportive of the act of protest as a means of countering governmental abuse. Domestic political pressure stemming from that aspect of the issue would have restrained the governmental response had the protesters not killed people.

actually, it's the other way around. Western media starts off with the assumption that China will crack down and the more China hides, this perception simply grows.
But some of the independent eye witnesses,
Transcript: James Miles interview on Tibet - CNN.com
Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com
(the last part with the annonymous Chinese person)

A lot more Chinese people are getting by the firewall than you think. Amongst the first generation oversea Chinese, there is an overwhelming sense of anger toward Tibetans and Western media. So, I think even if they got the same unfiltered reports like us in China, they would still feel the same way.