Losing my religion
A [Tibetan exile] holds a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi as Indian police detain them at Dehra… [Link]
Is every successful revolution doomed to end up on the Dark Side? Indian police have arrested a hundred Tibetan protesters carrying photos of Mahatma Gandhi, on a six-month, nonviolent satyagraha from Dharamsala to Lhasa against the repressive rule of China.
The largest riots since China clamped down happened today in Lhasa:
Roughly 1,000 people hurled rocks and concrete at security forces and military trucks pushing back riot police… armed police backed by armored vehicles were blocking major intersections in the city center and that an entire street in a busy shopping area outside the Jokhang temple “seemed to be on fire.” … he had heard “cannon fire,” and… tear gas had been used against protesters… the scale of the protests against Chinese rule was unprecedented since the imposition of martial law by Beijing in 1989. [Link]
To keep its trade deals safe, India is mimicking the repression of the Chinese government, which in ‘05 shot down people protesting a power plant, executed a dam protester in secret, and today puts more people to death than the rest of the world combined while charging their families 50 yuan for the bullets.
India’s response is depressingly similar to its silence during the Burma uprising a few months back. It’s one thing that India is finally giving business priority instead of sanctimoniously jabbing a thumb in its partners’ eyes. It’s another to do their dirty work for them. India should tell Chinese diplomats Tibetan exiles can say what they want as long as they do it peacefully. They should flatly tell them, ‘It’s a free country.’
But it isn’t, is it?
on Friday, March 14th, 2008, 2:10 pm in Issues, Politics, Religion › 
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It’s shameful, but you know what? I’m glad in a way that it happened. The govt has cracked down on all sorts of popular protests, whether by farmers or tribal groups or Manipuri activists, etc (without even going into the openly admitted human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings and disappearances in Punjab and Kashmir, or everyday abuse that goes on in prisons) for decades, and yet these are often glossed over as “internal matters.” A little publicity about repressive overreaction when it applies to a group that has global sympathy (and India does like to hold up the Tibetans/Dalai Lama as a sign of its openness) could raise awareness about just how cavalier our government is about rights, even though it’s democratically elected and accountable.
India is China’s poodle. We’ll make great pets
This is shameful.
I don’t think that there is any hope for the Tibetans. Their culture and way of life will be dead in a generation.
When the dalai lama visited Toronto some time back he made a similar comment. he was saddened that the traditions he saw in practice here are disappearing in their native land. though… by the same token - the culture wont die as such, though it will need a home away from home.
Revolution literally means to spin…so spinning in circles seems like a good way to end up BACK at the dark side.
I wonder what they were expecting will happen when they reached the Chinese border enroute to Lhasa.
These protests are pretty big, spreading to Tibetans areas in China outside what China calls Tibet.
Odds are China will stop people from going to Tibet until the Olympics. Can’t have people waving colorful flags in Tibet during Beijing 2008(!)(!).
Oh, and with this post I think you have gotten ultrabrown blocked in China. Couldn’t access the site today without a VPN.
Tibetan culture would have had to start its transition to modernity sooner or later. But it is not happening organically but by force, which cannot be good.
I just wish our neta/babus would show some spine: why do we have to lathi-charge on their orders.
their=chinese govt.
“Oh, and with this post I think you have gotten ultrabrown blocked in China. Couldn’t access the site today without a VPN.”
Wow, i guess this is part of china’s “peoples war”?