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March 25, 2008
Violent Crackdown and Information Blackout in Tibet
The news from Tibet keeps getting worse. Well, what little news China will let us hear.
China has been able to block information out of Tibet. Thousands of Tibetans living in exile in India had relied on email and cell phone correspondence to obtain information about the protests in Tibet, and the violent Chinese crackdown that has followed. But now those emails and calls have stopped.
This comes after China banned foreign media last week.
At today's U.N. human rights forum, China was urged by the EU, the US, Australia, Canada and Switzerland to ease its military crackdown.
Meanwhile, China has actually had the gall to say what's needed in Tibetan monasteries is "patriotic education." We can only assume the Chinese government is talking about patriotism for China; because, as far as I can tell, fighting for rights and autonomy for Tibet is pretty patriotic if you're Tibetan.
In the midst of all of this there's a little event that's supposed to happen this summer. What is that? Oh yeah, THE OLYMPICS. Yes, the Olympics are still actually taking place in Beijing, despite its perpetration of egregious human rights violations. Awesome.
About 50 Tibetan exiles in India began a global torch relay of their own, which will end in Lhasa, Tibet on August 8, the first day of the 2008 Olympic Games. Tibetan exiles are planning their own mock Olympics from May 15-25 in Dharmsala, India to show the absurdity of it all.
Sumedha Sood is a 2007 fellow in the Academy for Alternative Journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. The former assistant editor at the Center for American Progress, she is a frequent contributor to WireTap and AlterNet.org.
sports and politics
Posted by: Tomas Palermo on Mar 25, 2008 9:13 PM
To hear the US denounce as invalid protests or boycotts at the Olympics in Beijing is a travesty in light of the US boycotting the 1980 Olympics to protest Russia's Communist oppression. But then again, the US is an occupier nation of Iraq, so it's loathe to officially criticize another power doing the same...But for better analysis than I can give -- this week noted sports writer Dave Zirin also addressed Tibet:
http://www.edgeofsports.com/2008-03-22-332/index.html
"Other countries hankering after a piece of China's thriving economy have rushed to put daylight between the crackdown in Tibet and the Olympics. No surprise, the Bush's White House, underwriting their war in Iraq on loans from Beijing, headed off any talk that President Bush would cancel his appearance at the Olympic Games when spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush believed that the Olympics "should be about the athletes and not necessarily about politics."
While the nations of the West have ruled out the idea of boycotting the games, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Tuesday that the EU should at least consider boycotting the opening ceremony if violence continues. Later Kouchner backtracked, saying "We're not in favor of it. When you're dealing in international relations with countries as important as China, obviously when you make economic decisions it's sometimes at the expense of human rights. That's elementary realism.''