LHASA-TIBET-CHINA-WORLD

As I was sitting in a Mexican restaurant tonight, I saw that ABC news carried a lead story on the situation in Lhasa:  videos, photographs, and a capsule history of the Chinese aggression.  I haven't checked the other networks yet, but I'm assuming they followed suit.  NPR covered the story tonight; CNN also covered it; MSNBC covered it.  The New York Times had a page-3 story today; scores of state and local papers have picked up feeds from news agencies.  I've received emails and telephone calls from Tibetans, one most recently from California--2oo dead in Lhasa, he'd heard.  Many of these stories, as the report from my Tibetan friend, are unconfirmed and perhaps exaggerated.  But there's smoke here, clearly, both literal and figurative, and so there's plenty of fire as well.

This story is getting massive coverage.

A momentum is building, and we can help by writing our elected officials.  The International Campaign for Tibet, of course, is heavily involved in formulating various responses.  While you can write your elected representatives, if you're from Arkansas, through our own Action Corner on this site, you can also use the template at ICT to respond from any state in the Union.  You can access the site here. 

While it sometimes seems as though writing letters is an ineffective method of protest, the question of motivation is an important one for us.  His Holiness's long-term, middle-way approach to the Chinese problem is designed to alter the world's consciousness about human rights and Tibetan sovereignty.  Letters of support, offered up as examples of this changing consciousness, leave a subtle trace even when Tibet remains China's captive and even when Tibetans around the world still live as exiles.

As the networks, blog sites, radio stations, and online newsites begin to bulge with  coverage of the situation in Lhasa, we are witnessing a gradually growing consensus that Tibetan suffering has reached a tipping point.  Who is responsible for this?  His Holiness is responsible, the government-in-exile is responsible, and Samdhong Rinpoche too is responsible; but so too are the scores of us who have seen a sand mandala created and been moved by it; and so too are those of who have felt that exiled people deserve to go home; and so too are those of us who are deeply heartened by the success of a non-violent campaign in a world saturated by violence; and so too are those of us who have been curious about the integrity of indigenous cultures anywhere and saddened when those cultures have been compromised.

Writing a letter is evidence of this sadness, and it makes a difference.