China says "don't interfere"

Free Tibet Flag
Originally uploaded to flickr by Gromit Lad

I just "love" China's government telling Bush that one country shouldn't be meddling in the internal affairs of another country.

"The Chinese government puts people first, and is dedicated to maintaining and promoting its citizens' basic rights and freedom"

"We firmly oppose any words or acts that interfere in other countries' internal affairs, using human rights and religion and other issues."

--Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang, Bush chides Beijing over rights: BBC News

I'm sorry... did I read that right?

Tibet was a country in its own right long before China decided to rewrite history and claim otherwise. Is there a greater form of "interfering" than forced occupation and ethnic cleansing?

The Chinese government claims that the regions they occupy really want to be assimilated, and that anyone who claims otherwise is a splittist or a terrorist. Why do people buy into this when it is a country with known serious human rights "issues" and no true freedom of speech or the press is saying it? If a husband said this of the wife he had been seen beating; a wife who finally struck him back and then been publically beaten again for daring to so, we would be ashamed of ourselves if we blamed the real victim for her plight. Especially if we knew that the battered wife had been forced into her marriage in the first place.

H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama has long since stopped asking for complete indepencence, and asks now only for the Autonomous Region of Tibet to be allowed self-government as pertains to domestic matters, and a guarantee that they would be allowed to mantain their culture and control their natural resources in peace. These are all things they were promised they would be allowed decades ago when the Chinese occupation began. After all they've been subjected to, H.H. offers to stay "married" to China as long as the beatings, exploitation and oppression stop. For this he is called a subversive.

China "is dedicated to maintaining and promoting its citizens' basic rights and freedom"?

How are we supposed to reconcile that with their oppression by the PRC in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and the Tibetan Autonomous Region? How many people in these so-called "autonomous" regions have been killed or displaced from their homes, or been tortured and/or imprisoned for their cultural expressions and spiritual practices?

The irony is flabbergasting. I only wish it were surprising.

I hope either Stewart or Colbert will pick up on the irony of all this because no one else in the media seems to have noticed.

Question

Free Tibet
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by Kenny Maths
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Maths' original text.

The Olympics are being hosted by China this year.

My question:

OMFSM in what way can this be seen as a good idea?

China has an appalling human rights record, and even today is carrying on a calculated ethnic cleansing campaign against the ethnic Tibetans who haven't fled the country. Death, imprisonment, oppression, and relocation of Han Chinese into Tibet in vast numbers have made Tibetans a minority in their own ancestral lands.

However, the Chinese government continues to characterize H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, who is a Nobel Peace Prize recipient and was recently awarded the US Congressional Gold Medal, as a corrupt, power hungry subversive, and a criminal mastermind.

Inside Tibet, violence has broken out once again.

What business do we, the United States, as a "freedom loving" country, have participating in the Olympics in China? As we become increasingly dependent on China for its products and manufacturing services, we paint ourselves into a political corner, in which we don't dare to speak up against blatant abuses against human rights. This isn't helped by the fact that the Bush administration stepped down off what moral high ground we might have had when it started using and trying to justify the use of torture.

More info:

China says 13 people were killed by rioters in Lhasa. Tibetan exiles say 99 have died in clashes with authorities.

Tibetan activists have released images they say support their claim of heavy casualties and Chinese brutality.

They say the pictures depict protesters killed by Chinese security forces at Kirti Monastery in Sichuan province on Sunday - but the BBC is unable to verify these claims.

A representative of the Chinese embassy in London, Yu Jing, said it was "hard to judge from the pictures" but that if they were accurate, there would be an explanation.

Earlier, Mr Wen [Jiabao] said the Dalai Lama's claim of "cultural genocide" in Tibet was "nothing but lies".

Mr Wen defended China's handling of the crisis, accusing protesters of robbery, arson and violence.

"There is ample fact and plenty of evidence proving this incident was organised, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique," he said.

Mr Wen also said the protesters "wanted to incite the sabotage of the Olympic Games in order to achieve their unspeakable goal".
-BBC News

●●●

At the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in 1987 in Washington, D.C., [the Dalai Lama] proposed a Five-Point Peace Plan regarding the future status of Tibet. The plan called for Tibet to become a "zone of peace" and for the end of movement by ethnic Han Chinese into Tibet. It also called for "respect for fundamental human rights and democratic freedoms" and "the end of China's use of Tibet for nuclear weapons production, testing, and disposal." Finally, it urged "earnest negotiations" on the future of Tibet.
- Wikipedia

●●●

The goal of the Olympic movement is to build a peaceful and better world and promote international understanding by educating the youth of the world through sport and culture. ICT will therefore actively oppose any attempt by China to misuse the Games or its athletes to misrepresent the relationship between China and Tibet or appropriate what is Tibetan and portray it as “Chinese.”
Beijing 2008: Race for Tibet

●●●

Rights group Reporters Without Borders urged officials on Tuesday to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics over what it called brutal repression in Tibet, and France said it could examine the idea.
- Francois Murphy, PARIS (Reuters)

●●●

China accused the Dalai Lama on Tuesday of orchestrating Tibetan riots to wreck Beijing's Olympic Games, but the exiled spiritual leader denied the charge and vowed to stand down if the violence spiraled out of control.

The Tibetan government-in-exile said from the Dalai Lama's base in the Indian Himalayan foothills that it now believed 99 people had died in clashes between Chinese authorities and Tibetan over the past week, including 19 on Tuesday alone.
Premier Wen Jiabao defended the security crackdown imposed on Lhasa, capital of the predominantly Buddhist mountain region, and on neighboring Chinese provinces where rioting by Tibetans erupted over the weekend.
- Chris Buckley and Lindsay Beck, BEIJING (Reuters)

●●●

More than 2,000 Tibetans gathered from all over northeastern India on Tuesday for their biggest rally in the area in years, demanding the United Nations investigate reports of killings of protesters in China.

Led by hundreds of shaven-headed Buddhist monks in maroon robes, some as young as eight, they waved Tibetan flags and marched through the streets of Siliguri, chanting "We want justice, we want freedom".

"The U.N. is watching what is happening in Tibet but it is doing nothing," said Dawa Gyalpo, who runs a library of Tibetan culture in the India village of Salugara and helped organize the protest.

"We are asking the U.N. that there must be an investigation."
-Simon Denyer, SILIGURI, India (Reuters)

Also visit:

• The International Campaign for Tibet
• Race for Tibet
• Free Tibet
• Australia Tibet Council
• Tibet Protest in Amsterdam