revolts in tibet
 

http://www.tibet.org/

The tragic events in Tibet are the result of the intensified repression by China all over Tibet in the lead up to the 2008 Olympic Games. When it was awarded the Olympic Games in 2001, China's government made promises to improve the human rights situation. But neither the IOC (International Olympic Committee) nor the sponsors have attempted to keep China to its word. Instead, their silence has encouraged China to continue with its repression in Tibet. It was foreseeable that sooner or later the situation would explode. The crackdown and the bloodshed could have been avoided. IOC has played a deplorable part in causing these tragic events.

Report phoned in from Lhasa, Saturday, March 15:
"The situation is terrible. The person cried while talking to me and said that so many people had been killed. The chinese shot at everybody in sight and blood and piles of corpses are lying around the main temple Tsuglakhang in Lhasa. Many people have been put into prison where they are being beaten. Tibetans are being forced to beat up their own countrymen. Many Tibetans are refusing to do so. All travel has been banned. The person appealed for help."


I wish big names in rock would go on and denounce this barbarian acts. For instance, these guys here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_Freedom_Concert

...who do have all reasons to put their voices against the brutality.
your comments?

I'd like to see the Olympian athletes boycott these genocidal pigs. I wouldn't feel safe if I were an athlete.

yep. they boycotted the soviet games in the 80s but now they kiss china's ass.

oh they kiss their ass.

yeah that's just terrible. i always felt sorry for tibet and it's people. when i get older and actually have a career, i want to vist tibet for about a month or so.

i was watching an interview with the beastie boys and MCA said that he still supports tibet and it's people, but the cost of putting all those fets together was overwhelming. i guess i believe him since his wife is tibetan, so i imagine he just didn't forget about what's going on over there.

yeah. it would be cool if a good amount of protestors gathered together to put up something like a tribute to the Tibetan people of some sorts. A cd, or sumthing. To raise more awareness.

This whole thing, giving China the Olympic games etc with everthing that is happening there, reminds me of the lead up to the second world war with everyone appeasing Germany, allowing them to invade Poland etc.

exactly. china has said that they will not allow anyone to go to the aid of their territories (which they consider tibet) and that they will meet it with full force.

stupid fucking totalitarian assholes.

And to think they're going to be the next super power.

the next super police state.

fucking disgusting. i am arming myself so when they come to my door i will blow them the fuck away.

that, or i'm learning chinese. adapt or perish.

Well, that seems to happening in the UK, Mandarin is going to be taught schools. I've heard stuff about this on the news, China likes the UK apparently.

Anglophilia is a common thing there. There's some place called England Town or something, it's like a replica of an English village, I think, and I think with mock monuments though I'm not sure if I'm remembering that correctly.

fuck dictatorships.

Gebrselassie expects more athletes to bow out of Olympics because of air pollution

The Associated Press
Monday, March 17, 2008
MADRID : Haile Gebrselassie expects more athletes to follow his lead and drop out of some events at the Olympics because of Beijing's notorious air pollution.
The two-time Olympic 10,000-meter champion said Monday he was disappointed about not competing in the marathon but that there was no way he would reconsider running the race at the games in August.
"My decision not to run in Beijing is definite. Now I have to decide whether to run the 10,000 meters," Gebrselassie told Efe news agency. "I was in the city in August and I know what the extreme conditions of pollution, heat and humidity are. It's going to be the hardest marathon in history."
The IOC's top medical officer, however, said Beijing's air quality is better than expected and that humidity might be a greater threat to athletes than the city's noxious air.
"They can say what they like but the reality is different," Gebrselassie said. "I'd love to go for it, but health is my first priority."
Justine Henin has already said she won't defend her tennis gold medal. The four-time French Open champion blamed the pollution for aggravating her asthma.
Some long-distance runners could wear face masks to counter the problem.
The 34-year-old Gebrselassie, who holds the world marathon record of 2 hours, 4 minutes, 26 seconds, sees the 10,000 as a viable option.
"The 10,000 presents a lot less problems. It's four times shorter, it's being run in the afternoon, it'll be less hot with less humidity," the Ethiopian said.
Gebrselassie also expressed his desire to end his career with a gold medal at the 2012 London Games, though he didn't expect the world record to drop under two hours by then.
"It'll be hard to get under two hours in the next 20 years," he said.



its a start.

There was a vigil/protest outside the Chinese embassy in London earlier. Lot of people showed up (way more than usual.. there has been a small "Vigil for Tibet" outside the Chinese Embassy every Wednesday evening for nearly 20 years. Today's was the most shouty and vastly attended (by Tibetan exiles, Londoners and police) I've ever seen. The regular Wednesday vigil will go ahead as usual, apparently. This was a bonus vigil.) It got on the news and apparently some of the protesters are planning to hunger strike.

The Dalai Lama will be visiting the UK in May (I'm going to see him at the Royal Albert Hall, profits go to the Tibet Society). There's been increased pressure for Gordon Brown to officially meet with him. (If he does, it will annoy China. So it's up in the air.) Nearly 10,000 signed a petition requesting an official statement from the PM about it. No word yet.

The Dalai Lama has apparently volunteered to step down if it will end the violence.

I think he said that he would resign if the violence carried on.
It is partly because of China's claim that he is masterminding the violence going on.

just read, thanks for the update

i think this is directed at the tibetans so they chill-- him being antiviolence & all.

good article here

if it asks for a password try the print version, which should be trouble-free

Here here.

That's why I love him. In the midst of a crisis he'll offer to let the UN examine his poo. :D

This olympic games are going to be fairly ridiculous. In terms of pollution and security and such forth. Esp with the media coverage of rioting of late.
I was so happy when my boyfriend said that China was organising all of its own even staff and not outsourcing anyone. There was no way I wanted him there for this. Last year he did the asian games and moved between qatar and dubai, and TBH Im sure he was safer there than he would have been in China.

The world sucks balls.

I was going to say that, but there are plenty of countries who have had awful awful foreign policies who have been allowed to have the games. *cough* the US.

ha ha ha yes.

i thought that's as far as he'll go on the "piss on you" avenue-- very subtle. in my own paranoid interpretation anyway, ha ha ha.

True, but it's not just the foreign poilicy. I think China is slightly more totalitarian than US. Anyway, they still shouldn't have it, nor should those other countries.

STAND WITH TIBET


Dear friends,

After decades of repression under Chinese rule, the
Tibetan people's frustrations have burst onto the
streets in protests and riots. With the spotlight of
the upcoming Olympic Games now on China, Tibetans are
crying out to the world for change.

The Chinese government has said that the protesters
who have not yet surrendered "will be punished". Its
leaders are right now considering a crucial choice
between escalating brutality or dialogue that could
determine the future of Tibet and China.

We can affect this historic choice--China does care
about its international reputation. China's President
Hu Jintao needs to hear that the 'Made in China' brand
and the upcoming Olympics in Beijing can succeed only
if he makes the right choice. But it will take an
avalanche of global people power to get his
attention--and we need it in the next 48 hours.

The Tibetan Nobel peace prize winner and spiritual
leader, the Dalai Lama has called for restraint and
dialogue: he needs the world's people to support him.
Click below [ you may need to type in the web-site]
now to sign the petition--and tell absolutely everyone
you can right away--our goal is 1 million voices
united for Tibet:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_end_the_violence/97.php/?cl_tf_sign=1


China's economy is totally dependent on "Made in
China" exports that we all buy, and the government is
keen to make the Olympics in Beijing this summer a
celebration of a new China, respected as a leading
world power. China is also a very diverse country with
a brutal past and has reason to be concerned about its
stability -- some of Tibet's rioters killed innocent
people. But President Hu must recognize that the
greatest danger to Chinese stability and development
comes from hardliners who advocate escalating
repression, not from Tibetans who seek dialogue and
reform.

We will deliver our petition directly to Chinese
officials in London, New York, and Beijing, but it
must be a massive number before we deliver the
petition. Please forward this email to your address
book with a note explaining to your friends why this
is important, or use our tell-a-friend tool to email
your address book--it will come up after you sign the
petition.

The Tibetan people have suffered quietly for decades.
It is finally their moment to speak--we must help them
be heard.

With hope and respect,

Ricken, Iain, Graziela, Paul, Galit, Pascal, Milena,
Ben and the whole Avaaz team

PS - It has been suggested that the Chinese government
may block the Avaaz website as a result of this email,
and thousands of Avaaz members in China will no longer
be able to participate in our community. A poll of
Avaaz members over the weekend showed that over 80% of
us believed it was still important to act on Tibet
despite this terrible potential loss to our community,
if we thought we could make a difference. If we are
blocked, Avaaz will help maintain the campaign for
internet freedom for all Chinese people, so that our
members in China can one day rejoin our community.

Here are some links with more information on the
Tibetan protests and the Chinese response:
BBC News: UN Calls for Restraint in Tibet -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7301912.stm
Human Right Watch: China Restrain from Violently
Attacking Protesters -
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/03/15/china18291.htm
Associated Press: Tibet Unrest Sparks Global Reaction
-
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gSSpPcDOPMoAiRLhPUyezuCRiXBQD8VFDD680

New York Times: China Takes Steps to Thwart Reporting
on Tibet Protests -
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/world/asia/18access.html?ref=world

--------------------------------------------

ABOUT AVAAZ


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campaigning organization that works to ensure that the
views and values of the world's people inform global
decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many
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in London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Washington
DC, and Geneva.

Signed. Let's give it a try, everyone.

the first Dalai Lama was installed by the Chinese...

excerpt by Michael Parenti
In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. 15 The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care, They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land--or the monastery’s land--without pay, to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.16 Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. 17
As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.
One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.”18 Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed.19
The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery.20
The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.

Signed.

Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after 1959, they did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid labor. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular schools, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.32
Heinrich Harrer (later revealed to have been a sergeant in Hitler’s SS) wrote a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a popular Hollywood movie. He reported that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese “were predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were further humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists arrived.” They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and vagrants--all of which Harrer treats as sure evidence of the dreadful nature of the Chinese occupation.33
By 1961, Chinese occupation authorities expropriated the landed estates owned by lords and lamas. They distributed many thousands of acres to tenant farmers and landless peasants, reorganizing them into hundreds of communes.. Herds once owned by nobility were turned over to collectives of poor shepherds. Improvements were made in the breeding of livestock, and new varieties of vegetables and new strains of wheat and barley were introduced, along with irrigation improvements, all of which reportedly led to an increase in agrarian production.34

China still had no right to do what they did. They merely replaced one system that they saw as backward and corrupt with their own. Tibet was a very isolated place well into the 20th century, a lot of it's customs were similar to the kind of lives people in other countries lived hundreds of years earlier. China took advantage of their naivete, of Tibet's unfamiliarity with the modern world, they exploited every aspect of the Tibetans culture for their own gain. Tibet was (according to the Dalai Lama and others) actually on the brink of significant social change when the Chinese invaded. The Dalai Lama was a forward-thinking man even then, he wanted to establish better ties with the outside world and a fairer more modern social system within Tibet. (And he CERTAINLY recognises the importance of it now. The Chinese cannot argue that, were Tibet to become independent again, it would return to it's previous state of theocracy and primitive serfdom.) Tibet lost it's chance to evolve independently. It was easy for the Chinese to not only do what they did, but also to justify it. They still call it a liberation and make it sound like a noble crusade. But any country could call an invasion a liberation by pointing out the flaws in another society and claiming they were freeing the people of the country from those flaws. Doesn't make it right.

So what's new?

This is all just another dissonant tone in the fucked-up cacophony that is the modern world these days. If it's not China, it's Iraq, or Israel/Palestine, or Sudan, or Zimbabwe or . . . you get the picture.

At least the world is standing up and taking notice. And we're talking about it and it's in the news - for the time being 'till the next flashpoint in the world

So I hope it's resolved quickly and for the good of all people.

Australia is forging close links with China these days, and there's been a bunch of Aussie millionaires created thanks to the mining boom as a result of China's appetite for our copper, steel and a shitload of other resources.

With so much money coming in, I doubt our Mandarin-speaking Prime Minister (Kevin Rudd) will do anything to rock the boat.