China blames foreign media for unrest
　

DEFIANCE: As Chinese authorities clamped down on foreign media in and around Tibet, Pope Benedict broke his silence and appealed for an end to violence

AGENCIES, BEIJING, VATICAN CITY AND DHARAMSALA, INDIA
Thursday, Mar 20, 2008, Page 1

　

China criticized foreign media yesterday for their reporting on the violence in Tibet, while it continued to block or detain international journalists trying to cover the story.

Raidi, a former vice-chairman of the National People's Congress, said foreign news coverage of the riots that gripped Lhasa last week was "outrageous and ill motivated," Xinhua news agency said.

"Some Western media purposely distorted the facts and viciously described a severe crime as a peaceful demonstration, so as to slander our legitimate efforts to keep social stability as a violent crackdown," said Raidi, who was born in Tibet and like many Tibetans uses only his surname.

Independent reporting from Tibet has been near-impossible because of China's tight control over information and a ban on trips to the area by foreign reporters.

On Monday, police in Lhasa kicked out reporters from three Hong Kong TV stations and made TVB delete footage of violence.

Many local officials have been told not to talk to the media. Yesterday, a woman from the secretary office of the Religious Affairs Bureau in Lhasa said they had been told "to tell the media we have nothing to say."

International news shows have been blacked out in China when they start broadcasting images of the violence and access to Tibet stories on the Internet has also been blocked.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China said it had counted 30 incidents where foreign journalists had been detained or restricted from traveling, including in Beijing and Tibetan areas in Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces.

Associated Press photographers and a reporter and cameramen from Associated Press Television have also been detained and followed.

A Finnish Broadcasting Co reporter and cameraman were detained outside the monastery town of Xiahe in western Gansu Province. Police wanted their footage.

When the reporters mentioned new reporting rules promising greater freedoms for foreign journalists, police replied: "You don't want to know what will happen if you don't show us the footage," correspondent Katri Makkonen said.

TORCH RELAY

The torch relay for the Olympics will go to Tibet as scheduled despite the unrest in the Himalayan region, a senior Beijing organizer said yesterday.

"The situation in Tibet has essentially stabilized, the ... torch relay will proceed as scheduled," Jiang Xiaoyu (蔣效愚), executive vice president of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, told a news conference.

The torch relay, which starts when it is lit in Olympia, Greece, on Monday, is scheduled to visit Tibet twice.

VATICAN

Pope Benedict appealed for an end to the violence in Tibet yesterday, calling for tolerance and dialogue to end the crisis.

"Violence does not solve problems, but only aggravates them," he said at the end of his weekly general audience, adding he was following the events "with trepidation."

It was his first public mention of the unrest there since the violence began and it followed calls by some Italian intellectuals for him to break his silence over Tibet.

"We ask almighty God, source of light, to enlighten the minds of all and to give each one the courage to choose the path of dialogue and tolerance," he said.

"My heart as a father feels sadness and pain when I see the suffering of so many people," he said.

PRESSURE

The Dalai Lama held talks with Tibetan exiles yesterday, his aides said, a day after the spiritual leader threatened to resign if violence in his homeland worsened.

The meeting with the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) and other high-profile pressure groups came as he faced an intensifying challenge to his position as leader of the exiles' movement, based in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala.

The TYC has called for a review of the Dalai Lama's "Middle Way" policy, which espouses non-violence and autonomy within China rather than independence.

In contrast to the 72-year-old Dalai Lama, the group has also called for an international boycott of the Olympics.

A close aide to the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Taklha, said that a meeting with TYC leader Tsewang Rigzin and a handful of other leaders had taken place.

As many as 99 Tibetans are believed to have been killed in violence since the protests began.

It's use it or lose it on Saturday

Thursday, Mar 20, 2008, Page 8

Anyone who believed that China respects Taiwanese people should have been roused from their stupor after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) on Tuesday reiterated Beijing's line that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China.

The timing of Wen's comments -- concurrent with Beijing's bloody crackdown on protesting Tibetans -- drives home the need for Taiwanese to vote in Saturday's referendum and make it known that Taiwan is not a province of China.

Whether one supports the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) proposal on joining the UN under the name "Taiwan," or the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) version of rejoining the UN with the official title of the Republic of China or any other "practical" title -- or both -- the public should make its voice heard by participating in the referendum process.

The more Taiwanese democracy draws the attention of the international community, the better it can demonstrate that Taiwan is a sovereign nation.

Wen also said that Taiwan's referendums on UN membership would threaten peace and stability for the Pacific region and deliver a major strike against Taiwan's interests.

Look who's talking. Which government has hundreds of missiles aimed across the Taiwan Strait, creating a situation that has been called a potential flashpoint by international observers? Which government is "threatening peace and stability in the region" with a massive military build-up that draws concern not only from neighboring countries but also from those on the other side of the globe, such as the US and the UK?

And how could a simple exercise in basic human rights in a democratic country constitute a strike against its interests?

Taiwan has come a long way since the days of authoritarian rule. Perhaps some people have started to take democracy for granted, just as one might forget the oxygen in the air. But how miserable it would be if the air of freedom was suddenly sucked away.

Taiwanese know that democracy must be respected, perhaps with the exception of those politicians who urge the public to abandon their privileges and boycott referendums even as people in other corners of the world die for freedom.

Clinging to Wen's coattails, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Thomas Christensen also spoke on Tuesday against the referendums, branding them "pointless and destabilizing" and "unnecessary and unhelpful."

Wen and Christensen simply will not concede that Taiwanese democracy is an issue for Taiwanese.

On Saturday, Taiwan has the opportunity to show the world just how different it is from autocratic China.

The issue is all the more important after the UN Office of Legal Affairs on Tuesday again snubbed an expression of support by Taiwan's allies for the nation's admission into the world body.

The new government to be formed on May 20 may very well give up on the UN bid if neither referendum succeeds. Indeed, how can Taiwan ask its allies to speak for it if the nation doesn't stand up for itself on Saturday?

Beijing's not bringing cookies


Thursday, Mar 20, 2008, Page 8

As Taiwan goes to the presidential polls, it is imperative the nation notes and understands the situation in Tibet. For those Taiwanese who dream of becoming an integral part of China, it is important to understand that the treatment of Tibet and Tibetans is only a small sample of what lies in store for Taiwan should it become part of China.

For those Taiwanese who believe that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) represents a new day for big money in Taiwan, where Taiwan can co-exist with China in peace and prosperity, it is important to understand that there is no "co-existence" in Beijing's vocabulary.

The only definition of "co-existence" for Beijing is "undying loyalty to the Communist Party, upon pain of death."

Ma talks about 30 years of peace with Beijing. But Beijing has murdered Tibet's culture and autonomy over a period of 50 years.

Are you skeptical? Fifty years of Beijing's relationship with the Dalai Lama should have proved this point to the world already.

If a nation cannot co-exist with the Dalai Lama, a leader who personifies peace, just who in the world can they co-exist with?

Nor will Beijing march into Taipei with guns drawn. Its annexation of Taiwan is being planned in far more subtle ways, with or without the KMT's full complicity.

Wearing grins on their faces and talking about social harmony, cross-strait peace and a "one-China market," politicians on both sides are misrepresenting the underlying predatory nature of Beijing to the Taiwanese public.

The plans call for peace, but as soon as the guard is down, as soon as someone decides there is no immediate threat, the dam will burst and the flood of China's overwhelming tide will overwhelm Taiwan.

It will first come from the sheer numbers of Chinese visitors and then immigrants, money, millions of workers, hollowing out invaluable industries, and -- when Taiwan is utterly cowed and dependent on Beijing's succor -- blackmail.

Once overwhelmed, all hope is lost.

Beijing will not treat Taiwan like Hong Kong (which is bad enough), but rather like Tibet, where right now, today, at this very moment, soldiers are conducting house-to-house searches for monks supporting the Dalai Lama, looking for pictures of him or any other evidence of loyalty.

How long before Chinese soldiers are running from house to house in Taipei searching for "splittists"? Where will Ma be then? Standing in front, protecting those houses? Or running along beside the soldiers, aiding and abetting?

You decide.

With President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) at least I know they would die fighting.

They've already sacrificed themselves for Taiwan's democracy before.

I haven't heard anything from Ma that would convince me he wouldn't be on the first plane to Hong Kong (or New York or Beijing)

For those going to the polls, Tibet should serve as a loud and blaring wake up call. For those who think things have changed and that Beijing is a kinder and gentler adversary, wake up.

The predatory neighbor is not coming to visit Taiwan bearing cookies. It is coming bearing dictatorship and tyranny. Vote for anything less than complete vigilance against it, and you are inviting the beast to a dinner where you are the main dish.

And if you doubt that, if you are skeptical that Beijing could do that, just read about Tibet right now.

It's real. It's happening. The actions of Beijing in Tibet are no different than its attitude toward Taiwan.

And it's coming, unless you vote to keep it out.

You decide.

Lee Long-Hwa

Tibet riots a meter of Beijing's rot
　

By Sushil Seth
Thursday, Mar 20, 2008, Page 8

First Myanmar and then China. It is quite a coincidence that Buddhist monks in both countries have been leading protests against repression.

It is not surprising, though, that when all other avenues of peaceful protest are denied, people should turn to their church or monasteries for leadership.

It happened in communist Poland. It is happening in Myanmar and now in Tibet, where China exercises a stifling grip over the local population. (Xinjiang is also proving troublesome, though Beijing attributes the trouble there to Islamic terrorism.)

Poland, though, had a happy ending with the Solidarity Movement and the Catholic Church providing inspirational leadership.

And when the time was right and the Soviet Union was heading toward collapse, Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe reclaimed their freedom and independence.

Could this happen to China and its so-called autonomous regions, most notably Tibet?

The generals in Myanmar seem secure, with their international flank covered by China's support.

And the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) oligarchy seems quite self-assured that it is on the right track to make China into a superpower.

Beijing believes that with China's new international status it will be able to ignore or ride out any criticism abroad about its politics and policies.

The hosting of the Beijing Olympics in August seemed a surefire way of introducing a self-confident and powerful China to the world. But it is not all going according to script.

First, there is continuing criticism that Beijing is not opening up, as it promised, to international media, and is suppressing internal dissent before the Olympics.

Second, there is international condemnation of its indifference to the suffering of people of Darfur at the hands of the Sudanese government.

Sudan is a prime example of China's policy of fraternizing with unpalatable regimes to access their oil, gas and other natural resources.

Third, the eruption of Tibetan protests led by Buddhist monks has focused the international spotlight on Tibet. China has brought out the heavy artillery, reminiscent of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.

According to exiled Tibetan sources, there have been, at the time of writing, 80 to 100 fatalities from China's heavy-handed response to a popular movement against what the Dalai Lama has called "cultural genocide."

Tibet is proving again and again that Beijing needs to start a dialogue with the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people to accommodate their aspirations as a distinct ethnic and cultural entity.

The CCP's one-size-fits-all approach of swamping outlying regions with Han Chinese and obliterating minority cultures is not conducive to creating a "harmonious society," a buzz word in the Chinese political lexicon.

The Soviets tried this and it eventually failed because the entire system was top-heavy with the Communist Party controlling levers of power within Russia proper and its outlying regions.

China's leaders believe that they have learnt from the Soviet Union's mistakes and are, therefore, doing things differently.

Late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) believed that former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika was a crucial factor in the Soviet Union's collapse. Deng wasn't going to make the same mistake -- hence the tanks let loose on students during the 1989 democracy movement.

Deng looked for economic growth to make China a powerful country. And the prerequisite for this was the CCP's monopoly of power to maintain and ensure political and social stability.

For him, the Western model of democracy was a recipe for chaos and disaster. His successors continue to follow him on this course.

China's guiding mantra is economic growth at all costs to build up the military capability to throw its weight around.

It is as if all China's problems will somehow be resolved once its economic, political and military power make it a force to be reckoned with.

It is as if all the humiliations suffered under Western tutelage and Japanese aggression will be washed away with China's rebirth as the new Middle Kingdom.

Only then might its communist rulers attend to issues of social equity and some form of political participation. But it is a decision the CCP will make on its own schedule.

But as the events in Tibet show, things have a way of getting out of control unless channels and institutions are created to involve people in their own governance.

It is not that the Tibetans are asking for separation. Indeed, the Dalai Lama is advocating only genuine autonomy, with China remaining the sovereign power.

But Beijing doesn't trust the Dalai Lama. They are waiting for him to die so they can appoint their own Dalai Lama, having outlawed the process of reincarnation as traditionally practiced in the selection of a new Dalai Lama.

It is the arrogance of the system and its leaders, whether it is in relation to Tibet or China proper, which is at the root of China's problems. This will be their undoing, as happened with the Soviet Union.

Beijing believes that by choosing economic growth as its priority it has managed to avoid the fate of the Soviet Union after Gorbachev sought to push relative political liberalism.

But it collapsed largely because it was too late for Gorbachev or any other leader to save it.

The rot that consumed the Soviet Union over the years had much to do with the lack of a connection between its political system (a monopoly of power wielded by the Communist Party) and the people.

Its leadership thought it knew best, and people had virtually no input into the decision-making process of a narrow cabal that was dismally ignorant, indifferent and brutal.

China and the former Soviet Union are not comparable in all respects, but their Leninist political system, where the Communist Party exercises a monopoly on power, is a common thread.

And if the Soviet Union eventually collapsed because its leadership had no use for political diversity and popular participation, China is unlikely to fare any better over time.

The developments in Tibet are a barometer of things to come. All of China is racked by social unrest, with thousands of reported and unreported incidents of popular protest every year.

According to official figures, there were 87,000 cases of social unrest involving 15 or more people in China in 2006.

And this despite all the machinery of repression available to the authorities.

Sushil Seth is a writer based in Australia.

Whatever China does,Tibet will demand freedom
　

Beijing can be benevolent or brutal, but it will find that national identity lies at the heart of demands for self-determination

By Ed Douglas
THE OBSERVER, LONDON
Thursday, Mar 20, 2008, Page 9
　

Putting the Olympic flame on the summit of Mount Everest must have seemed a great idea to the planning committee of the Beijing Olympics. What better expression of China's inexorable rise to superpower status could there be? Everest was the crowning glory for Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953. So it would be for China's political elite.

Now the game is up. On Friday, a friend who organizes expeditions to Everest called me on his way to Kathmandu for the start of the climbing season. He had just heard that the Nepalese authorities, at China's request, had decided to stop climbers going on the mountain until after those carrying the Olympic flame had been and gone.

It was, on China's part, an act of frantic paranoia. Beijing had only just banned foreign climbers from China's side of the mountain, fearing pro-Tibet demonstrations. Now Beijing was bullying Nepal, distracted by a chaotic election campaign, to do China's bidding. China recently offered Nepal more than US$200 million for two new hydroelectric dams and increasingly calls the tune in Kathmandu, so there wasn't much argument.

With people dying in Lhasa and Tibetan exiles agitating in India and Nepal, what happens to a bunch of Western tourists may not seem so important. True, people living around Everest will lose a lot of money, but that's no big deal in the scheme of things.

It's what this says about China's position in Tibet that is so revealing. In a matter of days, the self-assurance of a regime that promised to light a beacon to the world on the summit of Everest has been utterly undermined.

For the last 60 years of Chinese occupation and colonialism, the Tibetan people have been starved, murdered, tortured, imprisoned and marginalized in their own land.

But even now, after decades of effort to subjugate Tibet, the Chinese authorities couldn't guarantee that they wouldn't be humiliated in Tibet's most remote, and easily controlled, location -- the slopes of the peak Tibetans call Chomolungma.

Dreadful abuses

Rather than have Western climbers unfurling banners to demand a free Tibet during a live broadcast beamed around the world, they have preferred the embarrassment of closing the peak to outsiders, as they did until 1980, four years after the death of Mao Zedong (毛澤東).

It's an admission of failure. It must be galling for Beijing. Following violence in the late 1980s and another period of dreadful human-rights abuses, the Chinese Communist Party had embarked on a policy of colossal capital investment in Tibet to develop its sclerotic economy. If old-school oppression didn't work, why not try consumerism?

Leaving aside the inequalities between Tibetans and migrant Han Chinese, there's no question that the Chinese have done a huge amount to improve the economic conditions of the indigenous population. Drive along the highway between Lhasa and Shigatse, seat of the disputed Panchen Lama, No. 2 in the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy, and you can see bright new houses being built to replace the smoky hovels many Tibetans used to occupy.

True, part of this resettlement program is aimed at settling nomadic herders whose mobility threatens China's grip. China recalls how nomads in eastern Tibet put up strong resistance following the invasion in 1950. But it would be a gross caricature to deny China's attempts to bring economic development to a disadvantaged region.

China says it rehoused 10 percent of Tibet's population by 2006, building 279,000 new homes. Now that's progress. The high-tech, high-altitude railway, opened in 2006 and tying China more firmly to its Tibetan fiefdom, has brought a wave of new investment along with more migration. When I first visited Lhasa in 1993, people still defecated in the street. Now it is a modern and much bigger city, albeit a largely Chinese one.

Tibet campaigners often argue that this combination of investment and migration will swamp Tibetan's ancient culture and snuff out resistance to China's annexation. If that was the plan, it seems to have failed.

Beijing predictably blamed the Dalai Lama and his "splittist clique" for masterminding the riots that gripped Lhasa last week. But reports filtering out from the Jokhang temple area, the holiest of holies for Tibetan Buddhists, suggest the anger on the streets is real and instinctive. It is the resentment Tibetans feel at the inequality they face in their day-to-day lives.

Han migrants

Life might have got better for some Tibetans, but they see Han Chinese migrants doing a whole lot better and at their expense. The new railway might bring more money to Lhasa, but it is also carrying back Tibet's vast mineral deposits and timber to feed China's galloping economic growth.

It's inevitable, given his huge profile and the popularity of his cause, that many Westerners see the Dalai Lama and Tibet as synonymous. The Dalai Lama remains a source of hope for many Tibetans, but beneath the charm and exoticism of his story, Tibet's agonies should be familiar ground to any student of colonialism. It is that inequality, and the despair it brings, that feeds Tibet's resistance.

But Beijing is fixated by a personal and bitter campaign against a man regarded as an icon around the world. Rather than allow the possibility that he has influence inside Tibet, and affection outside it, China courts ridicule by peddling transparently false statements about him. An example. In November, the Dalai Lama used his prerogative as a reincarnate lama to suggest his rebirth wouldn't take place within Tibet.

He has said this before, but the statement launched a typically petulant response from Beijing, suggesting the Dalai Lama's statement "violated [the] religious rituals and historical conventions of Tibetan Buddhism."

Given the wholesale destruction of monasteries in the 1950s and 1960s, and renewed efforts in the 1990s to crack down on religious freedoms and the strict controls placed on monks within Tibet, the idea that atheist Beijing should offer advice on the traditions of Tibetan Buddhism was understandably laughed off by the Dalai Lama's office.

China must hope, and friends of Tibet must fear, that when the Dalai Lama dies, much of the momentum toward Tibet's eventual freedom will die with him. Don't count on it. Tibet will still be a country that is ethnically and culturally very different from China. It's not a question of preserving Tibet's ancient culture -- that hangs on in remote villages -- but it's mostly gone in Lhasa. It would have changed anyway. Mobile phones and the Internet would have undermined Tibet's oppressively religious polity, already being reformed by the current Dalai Lama, just as they are doing to China's version of communism.

It's a question of identity. The fact remains that Tibetans feel Tibetan. No amount of economic development will change that. It's also true that China is implacable in its determination to stay put. Only a settlement that allows Tibetans genuine freedoms and economic equality will bring lasting peace. And that means meaningful agreements with the Dalai Lama. Only then will Tibetans begin to trust the Chinese.

Right now, China is stoking a future of ethnic conflict that will take generations and huge resources to solve. That conflict is deeply damaging to China's image abroad as a progressive and modern country.

The real question is what does China have to fear from a more independent Tibet?

It is the risk of difference, of heterogeneity that frightens China -- a fear of multiculturalism.