The "Free Tibet" Campaign

[Bl[i]tZ]

Graphic video!

China objects to Free Tibet campaign in Nepal - The Times of India

 

[Bl[i]tZ]

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/save_tibetan_lives/

Days ago, Palden Choetso walked out of her nunnery, covered herself in petrol and set herself on fire while pleading for a 'free Tibet'. Minutes later she died. In the past month, nine monks and nuns have self-immolated to protest a growing Chinese crackdown on the peaceful Tibetan people.

These tragic acts are a desperate cry for help. Machine gun-toting Chinese security forces are beating and disappearing monks, laying siege to monasteries, and even killing elderly people defending them -- all in an effort to suppress Tibetan rights. China severely restricts access to the region. But if we can get key governments to send diplomats in and expose this growing brutality, we could save lives.

We have to act fast -- this horrific situation is spiraling out of control behind a censorship curtain. Over and over we have seen that when diplomats themselves bear witness to atrocities, they are motivated to act, and increase political pressure. Let’s answer Palden's tragic cry and build a massive petition to the six world leaders with the most influence in Beijing to send a mission to Tibet and speak out against the repression. Sign the urgent petition by going to the link above!

To Presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy, Prime Ministers David Cameron, Julia Gillard and Manmohan Singh, and EU Commissioner Catherine Ashton:
A rising number of Tibetans are taking their lives through self immolation in a desperate cry to the world to stop the escalating Chinese crackdown. As shocked citizens, we call on you to urgently send an independent high-level mission to the area and to speak out against the ongoing repression. Only coordinated and swift diplomatic action can stop this crisis.

 

[beijingwalker]

Indians should look at their now problems

 

[Bl[i]tZ]

Indians should look at their now problems

off-topic troll!

 

[below_freezing]

The correct thing to do is to cut off fuel shipments to Tibet, so these people will not be able to burn themselves. This will save lives.

 

[Starblazer]

I don't know if this is morbid or not. But it's sort of a relief that Tibetans are more implosive rather than explosive like the groups in India.

 

[Bl[i]tZ]

I don't know if this is morbid or not. But it's sort of a relief that Tibetans are more implosive rather than explosive like the groups in India.

This is the extreme form of passive resistance.

 

[Interpreter]

I don't know if this is morbid or not. But it's sort of a relief that Tibetans are more implosive rather than explosive like the groups in India.

Exactly,when it comes to the bombs and casualties,no other places on the Earth can compare with grand ....India!

 

[Starblazer]

This is the extreme form of passive resistance.

Or maybe they just have more of a reason to be outwardly lashing out in India.

 

[Roybot]

Exactly,when it comes to the bombs and casualties,no other places on the Earth can compare with grand ....India!

I think your BFF takes the cake for that.

 

[Sasquatch]

Well there's always next time

 

[beijingwalker]

NEWSWEEK :Whether they like it or not, China has been very good for Tibetans.

NEWSWEEK
Whether they like it or not, China has been very good for Tibetans.

Feb 16, 2010 7:00 PM EST

Isaac Stone Fish

President Obama's controversial meeting with the Dalai Lama this week has already infuriated China and stirred up Tibet advocates who thought it should have come sooner. China says Tibet is part of its territory, and that the meeting represents an unwanted intrusion into its domestic affairs. But most Americans still see the Dalai Lama as the representative of a people oppressed by Chinese rule. Tibetans feel chafed by the restrictions on their political and religious freedoms; many are dissatisfied with Chinese rule, and this has led to widespread rioting over the past few years. They want self-determination; fair enough. But that seems to be the only story about Tibet that is ever told. The other story is that, for China's many blunders in mountainous region, it has erected a booming economy there. Looking at growth, standard of living, infrastructure, and GDP, one thing is clear: China has been good for Tibet.

Since 2001, Beijing has spent $45.4 billion on development in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). (That's what the Chinese government calls Tibet, even though many Tibetans live in neighboring provinces, too). The effect: double-digit GDP growth for the past nine years. About a third of the money went to infrastructure investment, including the train connecting Beijing to Lhasa. "A clear benefit of the train was that it makes industrial goods cheaper for Tibetans, who, like everyone else in the world, like household conveniences, but normally had to pay very high prices," said Ben Hillman, a Tibet expert from the Australian National University's China Institute. The train also provides an opportunity for Tibetan goods to be sold outside of the region and for a massive increase in number of tourists, reaching more than 5.5 million in 2009—up from close to 2 million in 2005, the year before the train. The Chinese government's Tibet tourism bureau expects the numbers to keep climbing. While Tibetan independence groups like Free Tibet raise sustainability concerns about the increase in tourism, Hillman points out that "tourism is an important industry that can benefit local Tibetans."

Infrastructure improvements have not only helped grow the economy but also have aided in modernizing remote parts of the Tibetan plateau, an area with 3 million people about twice the size of France. Paved roads allow herders easier access to hospitals and the capital, where they sell handicrafts. "Cellphone service in parts of western Tibet is better than in parts of New Jersey," said Gray Tuttle, an assistant professor of modern Tibetan studies at Columbia University.

Since 2006, the Chinese central government has been shifting its Tibet development strategy from funding massive infrastructure projects to programs intended to bring greater benefit to individual Tibetans. While Han migrants may compete for jobs with Tibetans in urban areas, diffusing the benefits more broadly among Chinese, the net per-capita income of rural residents was $527 in 2009, an increase of more than 13 percent from the 2008 figure and the fourth year in a row where growth exceeded 13 percent. While still low, it represents an increase in wealth creation at the lowest levels. Although Chinese statistics on Tibet, like Chinese statistics in general, are impossible to verify, it seems clear that material living standards among the 80 to 90 percent of the population living in rural Tibet are rising rapidly.

"I was amazed at the amount of money actually being spent in these villages," said Melvyn Goldstein, codirector of the Center for Research on Tibet at Case Western Reserve University. Through extensive rural fieldwork in the TAR, Goldstein found that "health-insurance plans are getting better, bank loans are now more accessible, schooling is free for primary school and middle school, and access to electricity and water is improving." At the improved schools, students learn Mandarin, which gives Tibetans access to work opportunities in government offices in Tibet and in companies throughout China.

Last month, President Hu Jintao held the Communist Party's fifth Tibet planning conference, the first since 2001, to strategize on the upcoming years. He said that Tibetan rural income will likely match China's average by 2020. And he stressed the need for Tibet, beset by the "special contradiction" of the Dalai Lama, to develop using the "combination of economic growth, well-off life, a healthy eco-environment, and social stability and progress."

It's true that, so far, all the money has failed to buy Tibetan loyalty. Beijing won't deal with the Dalai Lama, even though Tibetans revere him, nor will it let his monastic followers build any power or voice any nationalist sympathy. Instead, the government is offering Tibetans the same bargain it has offered the rest of the country: in exchange for an astronomical rise in living standards, the government requires citizens to relinquish the right to free worship and free speech. The Chinese government has kept its end of the deal. Even if Tibetan residents never signed the contract, they have benefited from its enforcement—a fact Obama might keep in mind when he meets the Dalai Lama.

Dalai Lama says China is good for Tibet
India Gazette
Saturday 19th January, 2008

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has said that Tibet has gained greater material benefit under China authority.

While addressing students of the Indian Institute of Management, he said every Tibetan wanted Tibet to modernise.

He said as far as material development was concerned, the country received greater benefit from remaining within the Peoples Republic of China.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

I don't know if this is morbid or not. But it's sort of a relief that Tibetans are more implosive rather than explosive like the groups in India.

Very true.

Firstly, these types of activists tend to kill themselves rather than killing others. Which is an excellent quality to have.

Secondly, the ones who burn themselves to death, are the most radical in terms of politics. So they are essentially taking themselves out of the picture, and saving us a lot of political trouble in the future.

 

[beijingwalker]

We bring tibetans wealth and prosperity,all people even Dalai lama can see that.what India brings to Kashmir people? death and mass graveyards.

 

[Sasquatch]

We bring tibet wealth and properity,all people even Dalai lama can see that.what India bring to Kashmir people? death and mass graveyards.

Dalai lama can't even run his own town of dharamsala how does he expect to run all of tibet ?