Archive for March, 2008
Free Tibet!
by R F on March 18th, 2008
And I do mean all of Tibet. The country was split up during the Chinese occupation, so not only what the occupying government identifies as the ‘Tibet Autonomous Region’ should be set free, but also the parts of the country that are sorted under other parts of the dictatorship of China should be released.
There is a lot of violence in Tibet these days, and the parties blame each other. It seems like a lot of the tibetan population has grown tired of 50 years of chinezifikation (a lot of chinese, mainly Han-chinese have moved/been moved into Tibet in a manner that can be recognized from the Soviet occupations of, among others, the Baltic countries). This is the underlying reason for the attacks by some tibetans against Han-chinese in Tibet. This is understandable, but not the way forward since it only gives the Chinese dicatorship the reason it needs to bring out the heavy guns.
Listen to Dalai Lama, use non-violence means of protest, use video cameras and try to smuggle out as many videos as possible of the opression, however small each piece of evidence may seem it helps to turn the opinion in the West.
My opinion is that the Olympic Games in Beijing should be boycotted by (first and foremost) the EU and the USA. All other countries should feel free to join in the boycott, and a parallell olympics should be held in democratic countries for the countries joining the boycott. Any companies who would like to sponsor? This way the athletes should not have their careers totally ruined. If some countries could boycott the 1980 / 1984 games it should be an easy decision to do it again now. (If I were an athlete going to Beijing, I would a) Smuggle in a Tibetan flag - in my underwear if necessary - and choose a moment to display it in front of the media in a way so that the dictatorship couldn’t intervene without losing face b) refuse to recieve a medal, or flowers, from any representative from the Chinese communist dictators.)