free tibet now

Apr 04 2010 ∞

“ Chinese brothers and sisters - wherever you may be - with deep concern I appeal to you to help dispel the misunderstandings between our two communities. Moreover, I appeal to you to help us find a peaceful, lasting solution to the problem of Tibet through dialogue in the spirit of understanding and accommodation.

— An Appeal to the Chinese People from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama , 28 March 2008 http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?id=20138&article=His+Holiness+the+Dalai+Lama’s+appeal+to+Chinese+people+in+the+wake+of+Tibet+unrest

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“ [T]here were Tibetans who resisted, and faced the full wrath of the Party. In 1969 there was widespread rebellion throughout Tibet, eventually crushed by the PLA. The best-documented episode is the revolt led by Thrinley Chodron, a young nun from the xian (county) of Nyemo, who marched her followers armed with swords and spears to the local Party headquarters, and slaughtered both the Chinese officials and the Tibetan cadres working for them. At first the Party ignored the massacre, thinking it was a manifestation of the Cultural Revolution as we know, murders could be exonerated if they fell under the rubric of class struggle. But the authorities soon realized that these Tibetan peasants were rebelling not in the name of the “newly liberated serfs” but in defence of their faith. What was more, they targeted only Chinese Party officials and those Tibetans seen as colluding with the colonizing power. The revolt spread from Nyemo through eighteen xians of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), and the Party was forced to send in the PLA to suppress it. Thrinley and fifteen of her followers were eventually captured and brought to Lhasa for public execution. Even today, the Party has expurgated this episode from the historical record as it fails to conform to their image of liberated peasants or, indeed, to Wang’s portrayal of Tibetans joyfully “casting off the spectre of the afterlife that had hung over them for so long”.

— Blood In The Snows (Reply to Wang Lixiong) (by Tsering Shakya | New Left Review | May-June 2002) http://www.friendsoftibet.org/databank/tibethistory/tibeth3.html

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“ [C]olonialism and injustice are never consensual: they are always achieved through the use of force, and perpetuated through the brutalization and degradation of the native people. It was, after all, Mao who announced that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

— Blood In The Snows (Reply to Wang Lixiong) (by Tsering Shakya | New Left Review | May-June 2002) http://www.friendsoftibet.org/databank/tibethistory/tibeth3.html

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“ …How big was the 8th-century “China”? If “China” means the land of the Tang Dynasty, the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, which was ruled by Tubo/Tufan (吐蕃), does not count. Tubo/Tufan was a sovereignty independent of the Tang Dynasty. At least it was not administered by the Tang Dynasty. Otherwise, there would have been no need for Tang Taizong to marry Princess Wencheng to the Tibetan king; there would have been no need to erect the Tang-Tubo/Tufan alliance tablet. It would be a defiance of history if we claim that since the Tang Dynasty Tibet has always been a part of China - the fact that the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau subsequently became a part of the Chinese dynasties does not substantiate such a claim…

— Professor Ge Jian Xiong, Fudan University, http://voyage.typepad.com/china/2007/02/tibet_not_alway.html

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“

The idea that Tibet became part of China in the 13th century is a very recent construction. In the early part of the 20th century, Chinese writers generally dated the annexation of Tibet to the 18th century. They described Tibet’s status under the Qing with a term that designates a “feudal dependency,” not an integral part of a country. And that’s because Tibet was ruled as such, within the empires of the Mongols and the Manchus. When the Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911, Tibet became independent once more.

From 1912 until the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, no Chinese government exercised control over what is today China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. The Dalai Lama’s government alone ruled the land until 1951.

Marxist China adopted the linguistic sleight of hand that asserts it has always been a unitary multinational country, not the hub of empires. There is now firm insistence that “Han,” actually one of several ethnonyms for “Chinese,” refers to only one of the Chinese nationalities. This was a conscious decision of those who constructed 20th-century Chinese identity. (It stands in contrast to the Russian decision to use a political term, “Soviet,” for the peoples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.)

There is something less to the arguments of both sides, but the argument on the Chinese side is weaker. Tibet was not “Chinese” until Mao Zedong’s armies marched in and made it so.

—

Don’t Know Much About Tibetan History, by Elliot Sperling, director of the Tibetan Studies program at Indiana University’s department of Central Eurasia Studies. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/opinion/13sperling.html?ref=opinion

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The Heights Traveled to Subdue Tibet

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“ I am proud we Tibetans have stood our ground and so far haven’t committed such inhuman crimes on any people! I am proud we haven’t strayed from the principles of non-violent political struggle, despite being oppressed like hell for more than fifty years. I am proud we still regard the Chinese, who kicked us out of our own homes, who destroyed our way of life, who massacred a more than million of our fellow Tibetan brothers and sisters, as humans inflicted with ignorance, and has the capability to set their courses right. I am proud that our leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, calls them “our Chinese brothers and sisters.

— Learning from the ‘Jewish Experience’. By Tenzin Nyinjey, http://www.tibet.net/en/index.php

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“ The spirit of the previous Panchen Lama as an individual who gained the respect of the Tibetan people will always be there. It is only through concrete action (and not through politicized praises by stooges of Beijing) that Gyaltsen Norbu la can show he is a Tibetan who has the real interests of the Tibetan people in his heart, and that he is not a puppet of a political system.

— China’s Annual Tibetan Ritual: Are these enough? By Bhuchung K. Tsering, http://www.tibet.net/en/index.php

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“ The Dalai Lama’s “middle way” approach to the status of Tibet is actually too moderate for some of Tibet’s supporters. But as often is the case it is the moderate and wise voice that is considered to be the most dangerous by an oppressive regime. The opponent’s radicalism is a blessing for an aggressive power seeking to justify its aggression. It is the Dalai Lama’s unique moral authority that makes him the devil in the Chinese book.

— Defending Tibet means defending an endangered culture as well as EU’s core values. By Heidi Hautala and Andrei Nekrasov, http://www.tibet.net/en/index.php

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