TIBETSPACE

TEXT: TIBETANS IN EXILE TODAY

Tibetans in EXile Today, or TEXT, is an oral history project being run out of the University of Arkansas.  The project begins this month as Professor Sidney Burris and Geshe Thupten Dorjee travel to India with fifteen students, video cameras, tape recorders, and sound equipment to begin taping and archiving interviews with the oldest Tibetan monks, nuns, and lay people who are currently living in India and have vivid memories of Tibet before 1959. The assumption of the project is simple:  as these elderly Tibetans pass away, so too do their personal histories; there is, accordingly, an increasing urgency that this work be undertaken and completed in a timely fashion. The ultimate goal of the project is to build an online archive of these interviews that will be accessible to the general public.  While in India, the students, under the direction of Professor Burris and Geshe Dorjee, will begin interviewing a broad range of Tibetans in the three-week period alloted to them, and upon return, they will begin the process of editing the film and producing a promotional DVD, as well as preparing the interviews themselves for the archive.  Stay tuned for updates, and please keep these intrepid travelers in your hearts and minds.

WATCH THIS VIDEO

This video runs for just over 48 minutes, has been viewed widely in Europe, and contains both well known and unseen footage.  Watch it in short sessions, watch it all at once, watch it when you have the time, but please watch it.

MAGICAL MISERY TOUR HITS TIBET

On June 18, the Olympic torch will arrive in Chengdu and begin its two-day journey to Lhasa.  Students for a Free Tibet has provided a helpful interactive map of the torch's route, along with pop-up information on some of the major protest sites throughout Tibet.  This is clearly one of the more abominable rituals in recent international history.  The banality of its evil is off the scale:  this is mental thuggery, pure and simple.

Call your friends, write your Congressman, tell your dog, instruct your children in the fundamentals of righteous indignation. 

TAIWAN FLEXES ITS MUSCLE, SCOLDS CHINA OVER TIBET

Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian today scolded China, not only over their human-rights violations, but also specifically over China's Tibet policy.  And he did this while attending a reception at the Vatican embassy in Taipei, calling on the Pope to condemn China's recent actions in Tibet:  "China's bloody crackdown on Tibetan people last month has shocked the world. Hereby I would like to call on His Holiness the Pope to condemn violence, and to encourage the search for a solution with the aim of protecting peace."  Regardless of President Chen's political motivations for making the statement, the international call for a Tibetan solution has arrived in China's backyard now, and as the external pressure mounts, we can expect an equal and opposite pressure to push back from the interior of Tibet--a kind thermodynamic theory of foreign policy that is wreaking havoc on the Tibetan people.

RAMOCHE MONK DIES OF STARVATION IN LHASA AND SAMDHONG RINPOCHE OFFERS INTERNATIONAL APPEAL

Several days after the borders of Tibet were officially closed, Samdhong Rinpoche, the Prime Minister of the Government-in-Exile, today offered this urgent appeal to the international community.  The unspoken but obvious fear of Rinpoche's appeal lies in his realization that having now severely compromised the media's ability to report on the crack-down in Tibet, Chinese authorities are preparing to solve the Tibetan problem with a grim finality.  At Ramoche monastery in Lhasa, one monk has recently died from starvation as a result of the severe difficulties the monastery faces in receiving the fundamentals needed for life:  food and water, for example.  Tear gas, lobbed into the monastery by the Chinese police, is apparently a staple of the Tibetan diet.

This is sinister.  Hunger-strikes, willingly undertaken, have a devastating affect on the community, as the hunger-strikers waste away gradually, highlighting their commitment to their principles and the depravity of the oppression that has triggered such an inhuman protest.  But to see one of your fellow monks slowly starve to death because of a Chinese blockade . . . the sense of helplessness, the sense of a deferred agency, of feeling yourself a pawn in a deadly chess match, all of this is a horrible psy-ops from a military torture manual.

It is difficult to see how this kind of suffering is due to be alleviated in the near future.  But if you have ever felt compelled toward action of any kind, and if you have an interest in these matters--as your having visited this blog might indicate--I would urge you to become involved now.  Samdhong Rinpoche is not a garrulous man.  He speaks with reservation, gravity, and from the heart.

His appeal is of international importance.

NEW CHINESE PROPAGANDA VIDEO MAKES THE ROUNDS

A couple of things to look at here.  First, a video that's been floating around YouTube for about a month.  If you go to the original YouTube site, you'll see that it's been viewed heavily.  I post it here because its essential (mis)management of information, its anger, and its hysteria are characteristic of one prominent strain of the Chinese response to the current situation in Tibet.  You get an example of the three big cogs in the Chinese propaganda machine:  1)  Historical misrepresentation; 2) extreme nationalism; 3) virulent defensiveness verging on paranoia.  But have a look for your self; it runs 7:00.

Of course, China is not alone in what I will call the Kosovo Quandary.  If one separatist minority gains independence, can similar claims from others be far behind?  Have a look at this new article discussing Quebec and Canada, and you'll learn a lot about China's fears, all of which His Holiness has now for thirty years been trying to assuage.

MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD: SHOULD DUBYA BOYCOTT?

The poll is open through April 28, and the question is:  Should Dubya boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics?  Let me know what you think, and I'll report back on the results in two weeks.  Go to the top right-hand column and exercise your franchise!

DALAI LAMA: TALKS UNDER WAY WITH CHINA

In his most recent trip to America, the Dalai Lama pressed his advantage in several ways:  a five-day talk on compassion in Seattle, a meeting with an unnamed U.S. senior representative regarding the crisis in Tibet, and a recent announcement that a group of his people are meeting with the Chinese to find a solution to the current problems.  And of course His Holiness has reiterated that he will resign if the violence continues in Tibet. 

All told, it's been an important week for His Holiness, as he begins his tour of the United States in Seattle and concludes in New York on April 22.  He seems to be ramping up the pressure, if only by confessing that there is little else now that he can do (which no one, by the way, believes).  Every day, the Dalai Lama proves himself of being entirely capable of new and vigorous tactics for increasing his leverage in the international forum.

On a related note, Wikileaks has posted a helpful gallery of photographs and videos relating to the Tibetan crisis.  Have a look at it here.

For those of you sympathetic to the Tibetan cause, you might have noticed that the Chinese voice is becoming stronger at the lower levels.  Pro-Chinese blogs are humming now, and it's clear that many Chinese are taking very seriously the Dalai Lama's power to shape public opinion.  Popular, Chinese blog-opinion, much like American blog-opinion, runs the gamut from informed to hysterical.  If you haven't looked at the Chinese propaganda website, www.anti-cnn.com, you need to visit it. 

It's difficult to engage many of these pro-Chinese bloggers because their opinions are non-negotiable.  They arrive at the discussion with opinions whose evidence lies simply in the dogmatic nature of their espousal and the volume of the voice that delivers them.  This, of course, make dialogue impossible.  And so it shouldn't be attempted.

But there are questions that should be asked in any discussion regarding the Tibetan situation.  More on that later.

Finally--The Financial Times  is reporting that the Chinese are looking to hire a major public relations firm in the wake of the Tibetan crisis.  The solution to all our major crises:  hire a PR firm. 

So it looks as though China really is ready to step into the modern world.

JOHN MCCAIN ENDORSES BOYCOTT OF OPENING CEREMONIES IF CHINA REFUSES REFORMS

John McCain today on The View, when asked if he supported a boycott of the Olympics opening ceremonies, responded that if China were unable to make the right gestures--including dialogue with the Dalai Lama--then he would support such a boycott.  Yesterday, Richard Gere came out in favor of a boycott as well. 

The bandwagon for this decisive protest is taking on high-profile passengers daily.  There are, of course, significant bystanders who have not yet climbed aboard, and in the future, it will be of great interest to see how this unfolds. 

It is important to realize, however, that no one of real credibility is calling for a boycott of the Olympic Games; they are calling for a boycott of the opening ceremonies, while supporting full participation in the Games themselves. 

On a related note:  several trainers for the American Olympic team have considered the possibility that their athletes skip the opening ceremony for physical, not political, reasons.  Increased exposure to the toxic atmosphere of Beijing could compromise the performance of the endurance athletes, particularly, and as a result, some athletes have considered a late arrival.  A boycott, in effect, of the opening ceremony based on physical, and not political, reasons. 

HILLARY SPEAKS UP FOR TIBET AND DARFUR, CALLING FOR BOYCOTT

In a presidential primary season that has been rife with safe statements and vague promises, Hillary Clinton has taken the decisive step of putting human rights over her own electoral ambitions and calling on President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics.  In a country that worships sports and most likely thinks that TAR is what you pave roads with, Senator Clinton stands to gain very little from her position.  While McCain and Obama have at times given lip service to human rights, neither have called for the boycott, nor have they given persuasive reasons for not doing so.  By calling for it, Clinton aligns herself against several prominent corporations that argue routinely and lamely that the Olympics shouldn't be politicized or that human rights in Tibet is an internal affair--both claims are at least inaccurate and at most an outright rationalization for getting a can of soda pop in the 1.3 billion hands that Western interests judge to be distressingly empty.

Kudos to Senator Clinton for taking this stand.