As preparations pick up steam for this summer’s Beijing Olympics, the world has looked with growing dismay at the violence associated with protests seeking independence for Tibet.
While casualty figures are conflicting, it is tragic that deaths have occurred both among demonstrators for independence and among victims of violent protest actions that reportedly included torching of public buildings and homes in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa. It is urgent to end the loss of life.
The protesters acknowledge they are motivated by the publicity surrounding the Olympic Games. The head of the Tibetan Youth League, a major exile organization calling for independence, told the Chicago Tribune that with the spotlight on the Chinese, “We want to test them. We want them to show their true colors. That’s why we’re pushing this.”
The U.S. has consistently backed supporters of Tibet’s independence from China. Tellingly, the Voice of America — a notorious instigator of opposition in socialist countries during the cold war — said this week it is stepping up its broadcasts into Tibet.
Tibet, closely linked with China long before the 1949 revolution, has gained much, both economically and socially, from being an autonomous region within People’s China. While much remains to be done, the region has come from being an abysmally poor backwater to being an area where more and more people, both ethnic Tibetans and migrants from elsewhere in China, can access health care, education, and jobs in a modernizing economy.
Undoubtedly Tibetan culture could also use more support. But some western observers point out that over 90 percent of Tibetans speak Tibetan as their first language, and report that both Buddhism and the arts are doing well there.
The current situation should also be seen in the context of Washington’s longstanding campaign to break up socialist countries, including the USSR and Yugoslavia, with dire economic and social consequences for their populations. Most recently independence for Kosovo has held the spotlight.
A look at the bigger picture suggests it is important to end cross-border efforts to dismantle countries whose social policies Washington doesn’t like, as well as to end the loss of life in Lhasa.
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I also thought I should add on a good post from a discovervancouver.com forum where they were debating the Tibet situation:
Before all of you Hollywood fans jump to embrace peaceful Tibetans, here is your Tibet before the 50s:
Tibet was a feudal society with two main classes: serfs and serf owners/monastery masters - " a xenophobic religious dictatorship, feudal in outlook, which stifled economic progress and tolerated slavery", in the words of the Rough Guide to Tibet.
Serfs were forced to hand over a large percentage of their meagre agricultural output to the serf owners and to labor for them. Serfs were inferiors, like African–Americans in the Jim Crow South, prohibited from using the same facilities and even language as serf owners.
Worse than serfs were ‘chattel slaves’, who were often starved, beaten and worked to death. A master could turn a serf into a slave any time he wanted. Children were routinely bought and sold in
Lamaist Buddhism may have been the essence of the culture of Tibet, but it was also the ideology of a specific oppressive social system.
Between the 1400s and the 1600s the abbots of the largest monasteries seized power. Because they practised celibacy their new political system could not operate by hereditary father–to–son succession. A new doctrine was created, with newborn children identified as reincarnations of dead ruling Lamas.
The central symbol of this system was the fourteen-and-counting men called the Dalai Lama, said to be the early Tibetan nature–god Chenrezig.
The Dalai Lama was the biggest serf owner. Legally, he owned the whole country and everyone in it. In practice, he or his family directly controlled many manors and pastures, thousands of serfs and hundreds of house slaves. When he moved from palace to palace, he rode on a throne chair pulled by slaves as his bodyguards beat people out of his path.
Most of the time there was no adult Dalai Lama on the throne. The most powerful abbots ruled as regents, training and manipulating the child–king.
Tibetan monasteries were not holy, compassionate Shangri–Las. They were fortresses; armed villages of monks with military warehouses and private armies. The monasteries expected—demanded—that the peasants support them.
Maoist revolutionaries said there were ‘Three Great Lacks’ in old
The bottom line is that while it was unfortunate that
But those prone to whinging about the political incorrectness of the Chinese government should stop to think about the actions of other nations in history, from the European invasion, rape and pillage of the
From what I see there is little difference between the way the Chinese and the western powers flex their muscles - except that the Chinese tend to only invade their neighbors, rather than sending armies half way around the globe.
Why the Mao Communists invaded
Now, can someone please tell me what's so great about the Dalai Lama? I see a calculated politician in exile using religion as his weapon (what's new). It makes me want to throw up every time I see people mixing religion with politics."
The Dalai Lama: freedom fighter or feudal dictator?
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