come on now. guys, let's not start the personal attacks. anger leads to nothing but wars. let's keep this discussion civil.
I think that many people in the West support the cause of Tibetian Independence because they honestly do not understand the history and the current situation of Tibet. Although their intentions are good, they are being misled by the media which is obviously biased and has an agenda against a perceived future threat in China. Here is a video that may shed some different light on Tibet. This is made by a person in the West instead of a Chinese. I am not saying that this video is not biased itself (it probably is), but I just ask you to keep an open mind when you watch this so you may hear another voice or just see things from a different perspective. I believe in the intelligence of the posters here, so why don't you judge for yourslef: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59AB0KGSyoI
From the same person, who is a German. CIA created basically all Free Tibet Groups <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XhG9-LdwG_k&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XhG9-LdwG_k&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
Just simply from this thread its easy for me to see why there is such controversy involving Tibet and why people can not come together to resolve this peacefully. On one side you have the Chinese people who believe that the Dahli Lama is some kind of terrorist plot leader (engraved in their mind by Government propaganda) and that the protests are fueled by the Western media to divide China, and attempting to stop her from her way to becoming one of the leading world powers, which it already is. On the other side, you have people from the west, most of whom are uneducated on the history of Tibet, and argues to "free Tibet" whom they believe that Tibet was taken by force in recent history by the "big evil" communist government oppressed all freedom taken away from them. And instead of creating peaceful dialog like those the Lama has advocated, these people protest violently, even call for the boycott of the very game that will promote peace and dialog in a country that very much need it to resolve the conflict. Been a Tibetan, I lived in Lasa until 15 when my family moved to England and ultimately here to Houston and still make occasional trips to see my extended family all of whom still lives in rural villages spread across Tibet and China, it really pains me to see the conflict and divide this has caused. From what I have seen, read, and heard from both sides, its clear to me that neither side really knows the entire story and refuse to acknowledge the changes that are needed. 1st of all those who argue that nothing is wrong with Tibet and that the Lama is a separatist who looks to divide China needs to put down their crack pipes and look at the issue clearly. The great Lama is a spiritual leader that is important to all native Tibetan people, and the fact that he is now seen as a political leader is caused by the very doing of the Chinese government. Who, ironically with fears of a religion that calls for the peace and harmony of all, tries to micromanage all aspects of our religion and make changes that they feel is "modern" such as dividing and handout lands that belong to our places of worship and places of peaceful worship. And they send "religious" officials from Beijing or some other East coast modern cities, who honestly have no idea of our religion and which in turn creates many misunderstandings and conflict from it. The protests for these freedoms that started this, was suppose to be a peaceful affair, suppose to bring light to these situation with the closeness of the upcoming Olympics so the government can bring changes. Yet these peaceful protest turned into riots, and destruction of many people's homes and business. The violence was not a result of those of us who wished for more religious freedoms, but by those who are poor, who can not afford food and such things due to the price of inflation by the fast growing Chinese economy. So instead of what is suppose to be peaceful call for more religious freedom turned into the chaos that you saw on TV. All this came from great social divide of the rich and poor created by the Chinese government's economic program that simply have no respect and care for those who are not wealthy. 2ndly The media and so called "activists" in the west really needs to shut their mouth, instead of learning our history and find out what we need and call for. These mindless fools, who have never set foot on Tibetan soil blindly follow others in protests to "Free Tibet". Tibet IS a part of China, that is something that my people have come to live with and agree with a long time ago. We call for a special state within China where we are allowed to manage our own cultural and religious affairs, and return the Lama to his true rule, to guide my people in our worship. We do not want separation from China, simply because Tibet will not survive without a massive aid, from food and power, to services provided by the Chinese government. Those who have not been to Tibet only sees the post card of our majestic temples and breathtakingly beautiful mountain views, do not see the other parts of Tibet outside of Lasa. Which is vast rocky wasteland, where few things grow, where the thing that we can grow is small patches of crops that is only enough to feed a few not to make a living out of. The Chinese government, despite their arrogance and refusal to cooperate and dialog, has brought a economical system to Tibet. They built schools, hospitals, transportation, and most importantly created a steady stream of tourists from all over china to which we have made a living off. We now have power and running water, which my grandparents never had. In fact my father was one of the first group of Tibetans to be educated in the schools built by the chinese government and he now makes a very comfortable for one of the largest oil companies in the world because of it, not bad for a son of a old fashioned blacksmith. We have no oil, little valuable minerals and raw materials to which we can trade, only small patches of semi futile land for subsistence farming, and small pastures that can support the little flocks of yaks and goats that will survive in such barren lands. And the only thing that is keeping us afloat is our connection with the rest of China. The Chinese economy, despite the great social gap it has created, has made our living conditions better then those of our ancestors. Something that I do not believe could have happened without the intervention of the Chinese. So despite the bad things that came along with such intervention, a lot of good things did arise from it. So please next time you guys try to argue "for Tibetan freedom" or "nothing is wrong with Tibet", please think of us Tibetans please first. Because is because of such misunderstandings and refusal of cooperation and dialog that we came to this point in our history. Stuck in the middle between China's mindless quest for global dominance and the self righteous fools in western nations and mobs of "Tibetan separatists" who have never set foot on our land is those of us who was born and raised there, and have family there still having to live with such affairs. Because in the end everyone have their own agenda, and nobody have a real about the real issue. And us Tibetans have to live with this tragic reminder everyday.
While I do not beleive whoever they claim them to be on the internt without any addtional infomation and I really do not know if you are Tibetan, I do think your post is well presented and argued. There are a few things I would like to say here: 1) Chinese(or should I say Han?) do have a lot of problems with the government, especially for those "lower class" people. The gap between the rich and the poor is getting bigger and bigger. While you probably see more Mecedes and BMW on the street in Beijing than you see in NYC, there are many regions people are still struggling for good quality of food. I remeber when I was a college student, I and many of my classmates volunteered go to an rural area in Southern NingXia, a hui(muslim) area to help. Many of us were totally in shock when we saw how poor it was and many girls in our group were in tears. 2) CCP does not beleive in any form of God and do not want any form of the religion to interven the goverment affairs or damage the nation's stability. they are very skeptical with many of the religion leaders as those leaders have proved to be involved heavily in the political issues. There are a lot of things can be argued here where religion and politics can truly be seperated from each other. 3) Odinary prople just want better life while those leaders(on both sides, plus may be the wetern onlooks) are more concerned with their power and looking-good. 4) The overwhelming Chinese support for the geverment regarding the recent Tibet inccident is largely due to their anger of seeing the brutalness of those "protestors", those seperatists taking advantage of the PRC's reluctance of going tough because of the summer game, and those westerners using the inccident as a tool to lunch anti-China campion. The misconducts from the western world in history and especially those in the last decade against China certainly do not help. 5) anyone with reasonable knowlege about China(especially Tibet) knows those western actions(redicule protesting behavior, boycotting opening ceremony etc.) won't help Tibet a tiny bit at best. They can only make themselve look good in somesense.
Thanks for the response rifla, while I don't expect everyone to believe my decent and origin, I only hope that this will not take anything away from my argument.
Nice post from rz04. I have to disagree with you on the point of the ongoing trolling in this forum though. IMO - it is the Westerners here who are more self-righteous and claim the moral superiority when they talk to Chinese people. Most the Chinese posters have admitted that they have problems with the PRC and that the Tibet situation is not one-sided. That is what we (or at least some of us) are saying. That there are at least two sides to this issue. It is moreso the "Free Tibet" posters (a lot of whom are ignorant of Chinese and Tibetan matters), who have vociferously criticized ANY stance other than their own - that China is conducting genocide and that China has no right or reason to bristle at condemnation from former Western oppressors into, largely, internal affairs. Their attacks devolve into thinly veiled racism (ie. "borg", "Chinese being uncapable of independent thought"). Heck posters tell me that I should be deported from the USA even though I was born here. I would have to assume the fact that my skin color is yellow as the only reason from deportation from. I thought progressives were supposed to be tolerant in this land of the free. Most likely - you will probably be flamed for your post. Sadly enough. You will see from that who the mindless zealots are. I doubt that any "pro-China" person here will attack you. However, you will probably be attacked by the "free Tibet" people. Heck, they have already said posts like yours (sans the being Tibetan part) as mindless, Chinese propaganda.
oh hey, just read your post. so ya, you are a Tibetan. i do agree with you on most part. but be sure to know that, the anger you see from Chinese people are completely a reaction to the west. i am sure you are aware that a lot people have no ill feeling towards minorities. as a partial minority myself, at least that's how i feel. as for Dalai Lama, honestly, if he TRULY give up independence. i don't think the government has anything against him in terms of his religion. BUT, Dalai is NOT only a spiritual leader, he is also the civil leader. Knowing that, unless he completely gives up his political power, i don't think the government will allow him to go back. vast majority of oversea Tibetans are from the upper class, so they definitely have they own agenda in protesting. but they don't represent all of you guys. i am sure that you know, the government constantly have propagandas about peace and harmony between ethnic groups. even that it's propaganda, but it's the good kind. so we should respect each other. the riots this time around, in large part was due to the economic gap between the rich and poor. Tibet is not the only parts in China that has that problem. and the government knows it and is at least trying to fix it. it's not very successful at the moment. let's hope it'll work out soon.
stupid borg! obviously he cannot think independently. i hate it when germans believe all that Chinese propaganda. this white guy must be pro genocide and hate freedom. he probably hates flowers and granola bars too.
Oh I actually forgot to mention the events of the actual riot and protest that I have heard from family members there. We last heard from my uncle who lives in Xigaze, its about 200 miles west of Lhasa, about two week ago to inform us that our family there is safe, and my aunt who actually lives in Lhasa was safe, we couldn't get in touch with her directly because phone lines was under "scheduled maintenance". And phone lines to my uncle has been cut off since our last contact, but we believe our family there is safe. From what I was told the peaceful protests started the southern Lhasa, while the riots started in north Lhasa where majority of the Han people lived. Its my understanding that apparently the Chinese government was caught completely unaware and its police force was completely over matched by the scale of the riots, she never gave a exact number on the protest but said thousand of people took to the streets, and i can only assume only a few hundred actually took part in the actual riot. Because there was actually very few soldiers stationed there at the beginning of the protests (I think around 200-300) because Lhasa have been relatively peaceful in the past 10 years. That protests during that time where mostly held by monks and was very peaceful, because the government used a lot of force in the 60s to early 80s when protests became violent. Anyways from what my uncle told us of what he heard from my aunt, that the government at first did very little about it. I am not sure if its because of the orders of "constraint" those soldiers are under because of the upcoming olympics, or if they where simply caught completely unaware. But it seems that they did very little to protect the businesses and people that was targeted. It seemed as tho they where simply satisfied by by containing the rioters where they where at. Since then the Chinese government have sent a lot more troops to Tibet, from what one of my relatives in Baicang about 50 miles north of Lhasa, have told my uncle that troops and tanks have started moving through Baicang on their way to Lhasa. And I can only presume more have moved into Tibet since the riots probably spread to other cities since our last contact with my uncle. I do believe the government is exercising constraint due to the fact that it is so close to the Olympics and that they do not want the violence that was experienced in the 60s and 70s, i was born in the 80s so i have only heard stories about those times. But from what my personal experience the government have been careful not to cause any loses in human life because of responses from the international communities. And I doubt that the rest of china could stand what some are calling "genocide" of my people. I can only presume that people could have died from the riot and casualties that could have happened since additional government security forces moved in, but that is only speculation. But I won't really know what is truly happening until we can establish contact again with family members but we are very confident that they are safe.
I would have to say that this is pretty much the extreme opposite of what we are hearing from Western media sources. I, of course, trust your account a lot more. Why would you think that Western media sources would paint an entirely different picture? Most of their sources are exiled Tibetans (who I assume are mostly ex-landlords). Which I suppose would be kind of like asking Chiang Kai Shek about conditions on the mainland. As a Tibetan (and one who has direct access to actual eyewitnesses), do you feel that there is any bias in the Western media?
Well I don't believe that the western media are intentionally trying to mislead people about the protests and riots, but I will not rule out that they could have exaggerated, or have gotten their facts wrong about the scale of the protests and response by the Chinese government. I believe the Chinese government needs to restore telecommunications to the Tibet region (I really don't buy that all communication have gone under "schedualed maintenance" since the incident has began), and also allow international media and non military traffic into Tibet. But like I have said I have only heard 2nd hand accounts from my uncle, who does not live in the regions where these protests have started, and i can only speculate what is happening based on his description, to which I can not really 100% say is fully accurate. And our conversation was mostly based on trying to insure that my extended family there is safe.
As I understand, the central government had been very cautious because of the sensitivity of the Tibet issues and because of the special timing of the Olympics. The local PAP just didn't know what to do. They were not given the order of gun shot, not even warning shot until it was totally out of control. The government tried to minimize the causualty and ended up the opposite. they have been critized for this by many Chinese people.
It's wonderful that a Tibetian has finally spoken on this thread. I applaud you, rz40. One thing that I'm curious to know is that how do you see the people in the Tibetian Government-in-Exile? I know from my conversations with Tibetians in the 80's when I was in China that most Tibetian people will always respect and follow the Dalai Lama no matter how the Chinese government portrays him. However, some of the Tibetians I've talked to seemed to think very little of the former aristocries in the old Tibet who were a big part of the TGIE. I have not had opportunity to talk to an ethnic Tibetian since I left China in 92'. From your family background, what do you think about that issue? The other thing is that I hope that the ethnic Tibetian people do not feel hatred toward the ethnic Han Chinese, especially the youth, after this current anti-Tibetian sentiment among the Han. The Chinese nationalism's face can be very ugly at times, especially among this younger generation since they have not lived through the Cultural Revolution years and witnessed what could go wrong if a belief becomes crazy. I do believe, however, that as China matures as a society, the nationalism craze will soften and more rights and true self-rule will be given to the Tibetian people. However, if the ethnic hatred between the Han and the Tibetian grow as a result of this current wave of Tibetian independence movement, the future may not be as bright, and that would be the true tragedy that comes out of all this.
HA. This coming from the resident bigot. "Jingoistic fascist China-supremacist?" Wow, that coming from a ignorant racist closet neo-con, I suppose I should be proud to be labeled such, considering who it came from. The same guy who had to throw strawman arguments to hide his embarrassment. See what I've done there? I followed your trend. I (in a satirical sense) attacked the source, instead of the allegations/issues you brought up, which themselves are idiotic. I am hardly surprised by your response, instead of addressing the issues, you've gone directly to attacking the source, something you've done all thread long. I've stated many times that the situation in Tibet ain't kosher, just not as bad as yokes like you would like to label. Nor did I ever claim the Chinese media being free or it is OK for them to lie, as you implied in your last piece of worthless rant. I am, however, still waiting for an answer on whether is it OK for the western media to lie but not OK for the Chinese media to do the same. C'mon, get to it, let's establish the rules of engagement so you can demonize China all you want. If I am a cartoon caricature, you are a clown. And true to the "sacred duty" of clowns, you've brought us endless hours of laughter.
I enjoy listening to you call me a neocon. You might as well be calling me a Shia Imam. The arrow misses the mark so far that it is nonsensical. I am as much a neo-con as you are a Tibetan. Therefore I have no problem with you calling me a neocon. I laugh at your random lashing out. You on the other hand.... Well, if the truth hurts, I can understand that. I appreciate the need for you to lash out. It hurts to have the truth thrown in your face. But, as you are fond of saying, I'm just 'calling a spade a spade'. And if you don't like the hurling of invective insults, perhaps you should have considered avoiding going to that card, when you threw the simpleton's 'Your a moron' line at me. BTW, you are really phoning it in at this point. When you can't even bother to come up with something that you haven't already used on someone else - that's just sad and weak.
Though I like you post, there are a few points I would like to say: Dalai Lama didn't define himself as a spiritual leader when he left Tibet and declared the independence of Tibet in 1950s. There was no such evidence or statement, as much as I know, as showing the central government was trying to deprive him of the status of a spiritual leader before he left Lhasa on his own will. Partition of China is obviously not acceptable to most Chinese. I don't think Chinese here claims the Chinese government doing everything right and proper. I believe the lack of understanding in the religious affairs as you said is rather possible. The central government did what they thought good, while it actually was not. On the other hand, bureaucracy is a problem in any part of China. Income disparity are creating awesome hates of the poor towards the rich all over China and have caused high crime rates. I was actually thinking that there much be something lying behind the resentment, which upscaled the riot in Tibet, that requires the government's consideration and remedy. But what some of the Americans here said - racial segregation, Tibetan language is forbidden in schools in Tibet, the government is trying to eliminate everything of Tibetan culture - are just absurd. At least the government has been making considerable efforts to make Tibet as prosperous as other parts of China while transportion is a big constraint. Some rioters are in the robe of monks in the pictures of the riot. And some of the rioters confessed later that they were paid by a monk to do damage. This shows that at least a part of the riot is planned instead of a sudden sentiment roused by the economic deprivation. What do you think? Maybe we need more evidence. Anyway, I'm glad we have a tibetan here to give us some new knowledge. I wish we would be clearer about what happened there with your information.
