Om Mani Padme Hum

I knew that giving the Olympic games to the PRC was a bad idea.  I was neither surprised by the demonstrations nor the military crackdown.  If the world doesn't respond, the Chinese government will simply use this as another excuse to further undermined freedom of religion, not to mention other forms of freedom as well.

Now I hear they are planning on banning all live coverage of the games.  That probably won't stop protests, though.  If a foreign news agency does get some footage of any kind of resistance to Chinese rule, I wonder how the PRC plans to prevent that from getting out to the world.  If they try to stop it, they risk creating a larger international incident which would simply fuel coverage of the initial protest.

While I don't condone the violence that some protestors have used, I also recognize that I have not been a victim of the atrocities visited upon the Tibetan people (or the other minorities who don't want to be part of the PRC), so I can't judge them either.  I do hope that the world takes notice and that other States seriously consider boycotting the Olympics.  I don't believe for a minute that this will help China open up.  It will simply justify their actions thus far.  If they can get the Olympics to Beijing, why bother paying any attention to complaints about their human rights abuses?

Specifically in terms of Tibet, they have taken the long view: wait a few generations all the while controlling official recognitions of tulkus (those teachers who choose each rebirth) further undermining the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and watch the culture of Tibet disolve.  Any attempts to encourage China to open up, especially on the Tibetan issue, will fail, I'm afraid.  The only recourse is for the world to put the pressure on--deny the PRC a world stage on which to put forth their propaganda.

Comments

[Rick Finney]

Hi, Gyatso:

We are receiving regular updates and witness accounts from inside Tibet and are posting these on our Web site www.rfa.org. Among other things, we have just learned that monks at Palyul Darthang, an important Palyul branch monastery, had a demonstration five days ago. Chinese security forces have surrounded the monastery, and many monks are now hiding in the mountains nearby. We'll post updates on this as they come in to us.

Best regards, Rick

[Michael]

new blog skin! Nice.