Columnist Nicholas Kristof has an interesting op-ed in the May 15 New York Times on Tibet’s “Terrified Monks.” Kristof tosses Beijing a few bones of appeasement such as his odd claim of “Tibetan brutality,” but overall the piece paints a grim picture of Beijing’s brutish occupation of Tibet, and is all the more interesting because, according to Kristof:

I sneaked through these Tibetan areas in Gansu and Qinghai Provinces, eluding the troops by taking a local car with curtains pulled over the windows, and it became clear that the recent anti-Chinese protests spread across a larger area in traditional Tibet than is sometimes realized.

Let’s start with the “Tibetan brutality.” According to Kristof:

Chinese citizens have been understandably outraged by anti-Chinese rioting by Tibetans in Lhasa in March. Tibetans burned 1,000 Chinese-owned shops (a few with people inside them) and savagely attacked or stoned ordinary Chinese citizens, even a child of about 10. The Dalai Lama and pro-Tibetan Westerners were far too leisurely about condemning Tibetan brutality, and America came across as hypocritical for apparent indifference when the victims in Tibet were Chinese.

Actually, for far too long, many Chinese and many of the Westerners who routinely appease Beijing have been far to leisurely about condemning Chinese brutality. That said, Krisof writes confidently about how “savagely” Chinese were attacked and stoned by Tibetans…confidently enough that he must be pretty sure of the accuracy of those statements. Yet later in his piece Kristoff writes:

Last month, the Chinese authorities ushered a group of journalists here on a tightly scripted tour to show that Labrang was calm — and then 15 monks rushed up to the group. One was crying, and all said that their human rights were being systematically violated.

After the reporters left, those who joined that peaceful protest were imprisoned, beaten and in some cases subjected to electric shock torture, the monks here say. That is impossible to confirm, and Tibetan versions of events are sometimes exaggerated.

So the Monks’ claims of what can only be described as “savage” and “brutal” beatings and torture are not only impossible to confirm (which is probably largely true) but also subject to exaggeration. But if this is so, then wouldn’t the claims of savage attacks on Chinese by Tibetans that Kristof notes also be, if not impossible, at least difficult to confirm and subject to exaggeration? After all, as Kristof notes, Western media coverage of the events in Tibet has been “tightly scripted” by Beijing.

Point is not to question whether some Tibetans-having lived a lifetime under the boot heel of a communist regime-might turn to violence, but rather that if a New York Times writer is going to be skeptical of the claims of beatings and torture by Tibetan Monks, then he should at least be willing to question claims about “Tibetan brutality” that might generate directly from the regime in Beijing, or that are passed along by China’s state-run media (which are, after all, one in the same).

That quibble aside, Kristof’s piece is a compelling read, as he continues:

Yet few will ever hear about the harsh crackdown unfolding here in the ancient Tibetan region of Amdo. Although there was some rioting here in Xiahe, and some attacks on the police and burning of police vehicles elsewhere, most of the demonstrators were peaceful. But even where protests were entirely peaceful, the repression has been merciless.

Whole thing here.

I turned my May 3 post on “Both Ways” Beijing into an op-ed piece for the Independence Institute.  Here is how “Both Ways” Beijing works:

First, China’s communist government vigorously pursues the 2008 Summer Olympics, and the International Olympic Committee makes the horrid decision to grant Beijing the games. Then when the regime’s domestic and world-wide thuggery–such as its brutal military occupation of Tibet, or its complicity in the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan– gets put under some scrutiny, Beijing cries foul and whines that the games should not be politicized.

“There is a handful of people who are trying to politicize the Olympic Games,” Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told reporters last year. “This is against the spirit of the Games. It also runs counter to the aspirations of all the people in the world, and so their aims will never be achieved.”

What a load of blather. Since Beijing is at the head of the line to politicize the Olympics for its own benefit, it is perfectly reasonable for those who care about human rights to take advantage of the Olympics and help shine a light on one of the world’s great human rights violators. And given the scope of the misery that Beijing heaps not only on its captive nations at home, but also exports around the world, there is no shortage of causes to take up.

And indeed, Beijing’s hosting of the Olympics offers a target rich environment of human righs abuses, including several of China’s captive nations that get much less attention than Tibet:

Like Tibetans, The Uighers (pronounced “wee-gers”) of China’s Xinjiang Province (or what was called East Turkestan before China took it by force) and the Mongolians of Inner Mongolia have lived under the thumb of Beijing for a half-century, suffering similar religious persecution at the hand of Chinese communists and likewise having their national identity steadily wiped out by the large-scale and deliberate re-settlement of Han Chinese into Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia by Beijing.

As I conclude in the article, if you care at all about human rights, go ahead and “politicize” the Olympics in Beijing to your hearts content.  China really has no room to complain.

Entire article here.

 

 

From MountEverest.net:

Alberto Peruffo, of the global campaign Sad Smoky Mountains, announced Sunday 11th May, at 13 local time as the first simultaneous ignition of red smokes as a protest action against the violation of human rights and Chinese repression in Tibet.

More than 100 summits are now involved: during the last few days the Sad Smoky Mountains project was joined by summits such as North Table Mountain (Colorado, USA), Rittner Horn on Süd Tirol Alps, Corno Grande, Corno Piccolo and Pizzo Cefalone on Gran Sasso (Apeninnes), Nanos on Dinaric Alps (Slovenia), Mount Giovo and Rondiniano (Modena Apeninnes), Puy de Manse (France) and also historically important summits such as Col Moschin and Summano (near Vicenza and Asiago) where a large number of soldiers died during World War I.

This comes only days after Beijing (and its toadies in Nepal) used the Olympics as an excuse to turn Mount Everest into a high-altitude police state.

While I’m pretty sure the very cool picture shown above is a photoshop job (since the Sad Smokey Mountains website posted it prior to the protest date) created for visual impact …..there are actual pics of climbers popping smoke in protest here.

Here’s how “both ways” Beijing works. First, the regime vigorously pursues the 2008 Summer Olympics, and the International Olympic Committee makes the horrid decision to grant Beijing the Games. Then when the regime’s world-wide thuggery, such as its military occupation of Tibet, or its complicity in the genocide in Darfur gets put under some scrutiny, the regime cries foul and whines that the Games should not be politicized.

An example from earlier this year:

Zhu Jing, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Olympic organising committee, said: “Linking the Darfur issue to the Olympic Games will not help to resolve this issue and is not in line with the Olympic spirit that separates sports from politics.”

What a load of blather.   Beijing is at the head of the line to politicize the Olympics for its own benefit.  Besides which, when have the Olympics not been politicized?

From an outstanding editorial last year from The Hill, a Washington, D.C. newspaper that covers Congress. This could have been written yesterday and it would still be spot on:

Sports and politics are not kept separate and rarely have been. Nazi Germany most notoriously used the 1936 games in Berlin to grandstand the master race (and Adolph Hitler walked out when Jesse Owens demonstrated what nonsense it was); Tommie Smith and other African-American athletes raised their gloved fists in Black Power salutes while standing on the medal podiums of the Mexico games in 1968; the United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow games to deny the Soviet Union the international acceptance it craved in the aftermath of its 1979 invasion and occupation of Afghanistan; the Russian empire struck back by boycotting the 1984 games in Los Angeles — and so on and so forth.

The games have long been used by host nations to showcase their modernity, power, and international prestige. Beijing worked doggedly to get the games for precisely these benefits. By unshackling itself from the economic strictures of communism, China has become a hugely successful international trading power while crushing political and religious freedom at home. It is thus both widely accepted and a rogue.

China wants to wear the games like a testimonial or badge of global acceptance — a rosette allowing it into the enclosure of top nations.

But it cannot have it both ways — inviting praise but complaining that criticism is out of bounds. As Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) noted, “to suggest that somehow it is unfair to ask those questions [about Chinese links to Khartoum] is ridiculous … If China doesn’t like the scrutiny, they can stop tacitly supporting genocide.”

One quibble with Representative Lee…China doesn’t so much “tacitly” support the genocide in Darfur, but rather outright subsidizes, enables and gives political cover to its perpetrators.

Eric Reeves (who runs the great Darfur website sudanreeves.org) from the March 22 Boston Globe:

Though Khartoum’s genocidal counterinsurgency campaign against Darfur’s African tribes has been authoritatively documented for years, Beijing seeks to obscure this grim reality through distortion, half-truths, and outright mendacity. In turn, nothing encourages Khartoum more than China’s refusal to speak honestly about violent human destruction in Darfur, where growing insecurity has brought the world’s largest humanitarian operation to the brink of collapse.

Why does China airbrush away Darfur’s genocidal realities? Why has Beijing been Khartoum’s largest weapons supplier over the past decade? Why has China repeatedly wielded a veto threat at the UN Security Council as the world body vainly struggles to bring pressure to bear on Khartoum? The answer lies in China’s thirst for Sudanese crude oil.

Though nothing excuses the sheer genocidal thuggery of the National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum, the members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might as well be alongside the Janjaweed in Darfur pulling the trigger.

Jacques Rogge, the chief of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), wants the west to be patient over China’s thuggery. From Saturday’s Financial Times:

Mr Rogge says while he understands the depth of emotion in the west on China’s human rights record, public expectations about the country’s pace of change are unrealistic.

Noting that the People’s Republic of China has only been around since 1949, Mr. Rogge goes on to compare contemporary China to past colonial powers:

Back in 1949, Mr Rogge pointed out, the UK was a colonial power. So too were Belgium, France and Portugal, “with all the abuse attached to colonial powers. It was only 40 years ago that we gave liberty to the colonies. Let’s be a little bit more modest”.

China may not be a role model in the west, Mr Rogge concedes, but “we owe China to give them time”.

Granted, Mr. Rogge was not the IOC president at the time China was granted the 2008 Olympics, but the IOC awarded the Games to Beijing with full knowledge of China’s atrocious human rights record, so now the IOC gets to reap what it sowed.

But as long as Mr. Rogge wants to tell the rest of us what China is “owed,” perhaps he could also tell us all how much longer the people of places like Tibet and Inner Mongolia should be expected to exist under the boot heel of Beijing, or how much longer the Taiwanese should be expected to live with Chinese ballistic missiles pointed at them from across the Taiwan Strait.

China has tried mightily to put on a friendly face for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, but with the brutal nature of China’s military occupation of Tibet on display to the world, the regime in Beijing is showing its true colors. Tibetans being murdered on the streets of Lhasa and other parts of Tibet by Chinese security forces, an amazingly efficient censorship campaign of video websites such as You tube, and the ousting of foreign journalists from Tibet is all bad enough on its own. But Beijing’s thuggery in Tibet is also a grim indicator of what might be in store for Taiwan should the island-nation ever be “re-unified” with Mainland China.

From my article on this topic in the Boulder Daily Camera (Boulder, Colorado) newspaper from earlier this month:

As with Tibet, China claims sovereignty over democratic Taiwan — even though it is obvious that Taiwan functions as an independent state — and that only Beijing may represent Taiwan’s 23 million citizens in international organizations.

China backs up its claim over Tibet through brute force of military might. Similarly, China backs up its false claim over Taiwan with over 1,300 ballistic missiles pointed at the island from across the Taiwan Strait and the threat of annihilation against the Taiwanese people.

While China has been tyrannizing Tibet for decades, Beijing recently codified its threats of violence against Taiwan, thus giving itself a legal rationalization (at least by totalitarian regime standards) for possible future tyrannization of Taiwan:

Shortly after the People’s Republic of China was formed, Chinese Dictator Mao Tse-Tung sought to “re-unify” Tibet with China. After first invading eastern Tibet in 1950, China pressured Tibetan delegates to sign a 17-point “peaceful liberation” agreement in 1951. Then Mao went ahead and sent People’s Liberation Army soldiers into the capital city of Lhasa and simply tyrannized Tibet by force.

In 2005, Beijing enacted an “Anti-Secession Law” which codified China’s already long-standing threats against Taiwan. Article eight of the law mandates the use of “non-peaceful” means against Taiwan if, among other things, “a major event occurs which would lead to Taiwan’s separation from China.”

As I conclude in the article, what is happening in Tibet makes clear that Beijing is more than willing to back up its threats of violence with the real thing, and should be reason enough for the world to demand an end not only to China’s occupation of Tibet, but also to the regime’s threats of invasion against democratic Taiwan.

On Wednesday, after first dutifully reminding everyone that “The United States recognizes Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China,” Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte talked semi-tough about China’s thuggish and ongoing crackdown in Tibet in front of the U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee:

The Tibetans have legitimate grievances, stemming from years of repression and Chinese policies that have adversely impacted Tibetan religion, culture and livelihoods. In the months preceding the protests, restrictions on religious freedom were further tightened, leading to increased frustration among the local Tibetan population. In order to be a great and respected power, China will have to make real efforts to guarantee to its own citizens the internationally recognized rights and fundamental freedoms enshrined in China’s own constitution and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Good stuff so far. Especially considering that the same John Negroponte last year called Taiwan’s planned referendum on United Nations membership a “provocative policy,” thus actually propping up Beijing’s threats of violence against democratic Taiwan.

After the semi-tough talk, Negroponte seemed to slip back into China-appeasement mode:

The Chinese government should seize the opportunity to talk to those Tibetans, represented by the Dalai Lama, who oppose violence and do not seek independence for Tibet. If Beijing does not engage with the Dalai Lama now, it will only serve to strengthen those who advocate extreme views.

If I’m reading this right, a senior U.S. goverment official just referred to those seeking independence from a military occupation by a thuggish Communist regime as advocating “extreme views.” Wow.

In other circumstances, a modern day “political education” drive by Communist China might sound like a bad parody on the old “re-education”camps of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Unfortuanately for the Tibetans being tyrannized by Beijing, “political education” just sounds like a code phrase for intensifying the ongoing suppression of Tibet.

According to Reuters:

In a bid to reinforce control in Lhasa, Party authorities have launched an education drive focused on officials and Party members, the official Tibet Daily reported on Monday.

The campaign to “fight separatism, protect stability and promote development” would focus on “unifying the thinking and cohesive strength of officials and the masses, deepening the struggle against separatism and counter-attacking the separatist plots of the Dalai clique”, said the paper.

Party members and officials would be assessed on their “performance” in the two-month drive, which will include television programs and organized denunciation sessions.

Organized denunciation sessions? That would make for some compelling television…just before the opening ceremony for the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

This was fast.  Rueters is today reporting that Beijing may recall the Chinese ship carrying Chinese arms bound for the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe after the ship was denied entry into several African ports. 

According to Reuters:

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the contract for the shipment was signed last year and was “unrelated to recent developments” in Zimbabwe.

Jiang said the arms shipment was “perfectly normal trade in military goods between China and Zimbabwe,” but because it was impossible for land-locked Zimbabwe to receive the goods, the company may ship the cargo back to China.

Only an authoritarian regime like Communist China would consider arming a murderous thugocracy like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe to be “perfectly normal trade.”

The Central Committee members in Beijing must be furious that the international attention being focused on China’s thuggery in Tibet might be screwing up their arms trade with the other regimes.

With China’s thuggish occupation of Tibet on display to the world, Beijing is showing its true colors. Read the Krause op-ed, “Misery:  China’s main export” on China’s moral illegitimacy to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.  First published in the excellent Colorado weekly paper, Johnstown Breeze.

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