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Spreading hate under the disguise of supporting human rights
By Dan Lieberman | | MWC |
China annexed Tibet in 1951 and has inexorably integrated Tibetan socio-economic life to correspond with Chinese dictates. This process has benefited an impoverished and subdued class of a previously feudal and spiritually dominated society. It has also stirred rebellion in much of the population - from the oligarchy of Buddhist monks who were stripped of power they exercised through religion, from angered shop owners who have been forced from business by better equipped Chinese immigrants and from a generation of Tibetan people who foresee the losses of Tibetan language, culture and society and their replacement by Chinese citations. The Tibetan people, who had legitimate grievances against their previous feudal society and overbearing landlords, have similar grievances that contest China's forcible domination of their lives. With no clear choices and no means to gain control of their own destiny, the Himalayan mountain people are doomed to a slow adaptation to industrialized society that cancels independent thought. Buddhist spirituality will be suppressed whenever the religion and society come into conflict. Nevertheless, valid assistance to Tibet's people, or any oppressed people, starts from gathering substantiated facts that enable understanding of a situation. Understanding leads to shaping actions and providing solutions. Distorted stories and ugly propaganda are counterproductive to the resolution of conflicts - but this is what we get from our conventional media. One example is a recent column from Washington Post columnist Anne Appelbaum. Her opening paragraph starts with unverified information, leads to unwarranted comparisons and then ends with conclusions that are propaganda. What is made to appear as sympathy for the Tibetan people emerges only as hatred for the Chinese. Cellphone Pictures In Lhasa, Anne Applebaum, Mar. 18, 2008 Cellphone photographs and videos from Tibet, blurry and amateurish, are circulating on the Internet. Some show clouds of tear gas; others, burning buildings and shops; still others, monks in purple robes, riot police and confusion. Watching them, it is impossible not to remember the cellphone videos and photographs sent out from burning Rangoon only six months ago. Last year Burma, this year Tibet. Next year, will You Tube feature shops burning in Xinjiang, home of China's Uighur minority? Or riot police rounding up refugees along the Chinese-North Korean border? Keep that in mind over the next few days and months, as China tries once again to belittle Tibet, to explain away a nationalist uprising as a bit of vandalism. The riots of the past week began as a religious protest. Tibet's monks were demonstrating against laws that, among other things, require them to renounce the Dalai Lama. The monks' marches then escalated into generalized, unplanned, anti-Chinese violence, culminating in attacks on Han Chinese shops and businesses, among them -- as you can see on the cellphone videos -- the Lhasa branch of the Bank of China. However the official version evolves, in other words, make no mistake about it: This was not merely vandalism... Protesters Disrupt Lighting of Torch In Ancient Olympia, Maureen Fan, Washington Post Foreign Service, Mar. 25, 2008 Social order had been restored in Lhasa, but 242 police officers were injured, (Public Security Spokeswoman ) Shan said. Shan said three Tibetan women set a fire in a clothing shop in the city March 14, killing five women ages 19 to 24. The next day, she said, two Tibetan men broke into a motorcycle shop in Lhasa's Dazi county, set a fire and then fed the blaze with two natural gas containers from a restaurant next door. The shop owner, his wife and 8-month-old son, and two repairmen hid on the second floor and died in the fire, Shan said. NYT March 24, 2008, By JIM YARDLEY BEIJING - In the chaotic hours after Lhasa erupted March 14, Tibetans rampaged through the city's old quarter, waving steel scabbards and burning or looting Chinese shops. Clothes, souvenirs and other tourist trinkets were dumped outside and set afire as thick gray smoke darkened the midday sky. Tibetan fury, uncorked, boiled over. Foreigners and Lhasa residents who witnessed the violence were stunned by what they saw, and by what they did not see: the police. Riot police officers fled after an initial skirmish and then were often nowhere to be found. Some Chinese shopkeepers begged for protection. "The whole day I didn't see a single police officer or soldier," said an American woman who spent hours navigating the riot scene. "The Tibetans were just running free." Witnesses say police reinforcements who arrived with shields and riot gear were overwhelmed. "Almost immediately they were rushed by a massive group of Tibetans," one witness said. Police officers fled, and a mob of Tibetans poured out of the old quarter onto Beijing Road, a large commercial street. A riot had begun. Angry Tibetans attacked a branch of the Bank of China and burned it to a blackened husk. Photos and video images show Tibetans smashing Chinese shops with stones and setting them on fire. Witnesses described Tibetans attacking Chinese on bicycles and throwing rocks at taxis driven by Chinese. Later, crowds also burned shops owned by Muslims. (1) Spurious information is circulated. This image from Time Online is described as: Tibetan marchers are arrested by police officials on March 13.  | | AFP / Getty Images |
Is this a march or a sit-in of a few people? Are these Chinese police or Indian police? (2) The Chinese didn't have many policemen, and no military, in an area where the western press claims the China government is daily subjugating Tibetans. (3) The Chinese police showed much restraint. (4) The Tibetans don't seem as peace loving and pacifist as characterized. They can be quite violent. (5) Although Tibetans started the violence, media emphasized the Chinese attempts to stop the violence as being oppressive. Media, without verification, attributed the Tibetan violence to a simple explanation: "The monks' marches then escalated into generalized, unplanned, anti-Chinese violence..." (6) The media were more sympathetic to killers than victims. (7) There were no verified reports of any large scale insurrection or any killings of demonstrators by Chinese forces. Reports came from a Tibetan exile group located in India, a thousand miles from the scene. They supplied no proof of their information. Are the Tibet riots sufficient for generating a unique hostility against China? No matter the underlying reasons, how can the murder of innocent citizens, rioting, looting, burning autos and shops be justified? What would any government do in similar circumstances? What did the U.S. authorities do in Watts I, Watts II, Newark, Detroit, and many other urban riots? Although peoples in several nations have rioted against Chinese intrusions in their economic lives, in Zambia, Solomon Islands and other places, these riots, and other worldwide daily riots against foreign intrusion, have not been similarly reported by the media. Why? Evidently, because the Tibet situation is a vulnerable issue that easily excites the world community against China How does China's response to the Tibet rioters compare to U.S. response to Iraq rioters and Israel's response to Palestinian rioters?
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