Posted on 03/25/2008 5:40:17 AM PDT by em2vn
As a lifelong activist who has worked on human rights issues around the globe, I hold the view that the best representatives of a culture are its people; that people create their own history, and in the case of the colonized or the oppressed that history is often rewritten by the oppressor. I do not assume that simply because a country is communist or socialist or capitalist that its practices toward its own people or its foreign policies are more or less honorable; beyond all the rhetoric, the reality of a situation can always be measured by the affected people themselves.
The Tibet issue is one that the far left has found to be somewhat of a conundrum, for the simple reason that most other popular human rights struggles can be easily linked to a larger struggle against U.S. or European imperialism. Therefore these struggles - be it in Palestine, or East Timor, or Colombia, fit nicely into the larger - and often rather myopic - worldview of the leftist.
(Excerpt) Read more at studentsforafreetibet.org ...
The truth is that we’d be better off if the entire rest of the world were communist. That way, we would not have to compete against them for scarce world resources because they’d be living in poverty, and would not be able to purchase them anyway.
shocker
Question: Why do these leftist "struggles" never take place in or in regard to sub-Saharan [a.k.a. Black] Africa? Why Timor more than Zimb.? Why Tibet more than Kenya?
I laughed out loud at this article. Here in LA you STILL see ‘Free Tibet’ bumperstickers. I know darned well these are lefties, you can tell by their beater-cars and the plethora of bumperstickers plastered on them.
It’s just lovely to see them trying to figure out which thing they cherish more — Marxism or Free Tibet, black folks or wimmen, etc.
Get the popcorn.
Yup, ‘free tibet’ sprinkled in with various rainbows and ‘coexist’ and ‘war is not the answer’ and ‘Bush is Satan’ bumper stickers here in downtown Atlanta.
Now the ‘Obama ‘08s’ are showing up mixed right in.
Now and then a Kerry/Edwards from ‘04 still clinging stubbornly to insanity.
The author left me when he equated our efforts in Iraq to “occupation”. No idiot in his right mind would consider 150,000 troops in a country of millions, to be an occupation.
The length of the article relative to the subject at hand, exceeded by a factor of huge. He seemingly couldn’t get to the point, and I was having difficulties finding it.
Yep, the same around Boulder, Colorado. Free Tibet, Kerry Edwards and Code Pink stickers on a beater Suburu. Somehow the pro-Marx stickers outnumber the single freedom sticker. I can’t get over the irony of it.
While the current Dalai Lama is a worldly diplomat, I have some apprehensions about a free Tibet as a theocracy under his successor, under religious laws and with monks as policemen.
People assume Buddhism is peaceful and gentle and all that, but not all versions of Buddhism are like that. I doubt that we would see the equivalent of a Buddhist Taliban, but any form of government that isn’t democratic I have apprehensions about.
Yep, gonna have to rank that up there in the nigh-impossible category.
Do you think that the people of Tibet should live under communist dictatorship because of what you imagine could possibly happen.
By the way, you don’t live in a democracy if you live in the United States.
Actually, I think that what the people of Tibet are living under is one degree worse than a communist dictatorship. That is, it is the Chinese intent to *replace* the Tibetans with Han Chinese.
The Chinese are using the same technique in the Uighur regions of the West. They import so many Han Chinese to an area that by far they outnumber the local residents. They take over all commerce and slowly marginalize the local economy so much that it dies out.
Since the Uighur region is much larger, but has a smaller population, its integration into China is somewhat faster than what is planned for Tibet, where Tibetans still outnumber Han Chinese.
So this means a restoration of a free Tibet will almost have to involve the expulsion of the Han Chinese already there. Ethnic cleansing in response to ethnic displacement.
Would the Tibetans have a problem with expelling the Han Chinese if they regained their independence? Probably not, no more than the Kurds have expelling the Arabs from their lands for much the same reason. But what then?
There is no model for a democratic Tibet. The Dalai Lama and the other high lamas are the religious lords and princes of the people. And while they might wish to be benevolent rulers, there is no secular law.
So what is their Buddhist law that would rule Tibet?
http://www.budtempchi.org/12prin.html
Apply these to a case of murder, robbery, and rape. What punishments would you expect to be meted out by the policeman/judge/jury/monk who has arrested you?
The obvious problems should start to present themselves.
What Buddhist nations have Police/Judge/Jury/Monk forms of law enforcement?
If there are real Buddhists monks that go around stomping heads and shooting people.. Well, you got a point.
I’d be really surprised if a Buddhist sect can get anywhere near as evil as the most enlightened islamic sect. It may happen on the extremes of them, but that’s hardly the norm.
You only need to look next door to neighboring Bhutan which recently held it’s first “election” in which the King’s party won 94% of the governing seats to see friendly Buddhists in action.
Bhutan has about 2.4 million people. Tibet has about 2.7 million.
Bhutan has sumptuary laws which forces subjects to wear native traditional costumes.
Bhutan has discriminatory legislation which puts into place quotas for the majority population for both education and employment.
Bhutan deprives non-Buddhist and non-Bhote ethnic groups of both political rights and economic rights.
Bhutan practices actual ethnic cleansing by using its army forcibly depriving over a hundred thousand people of their land and homes and driving them out of the country to “preserve” the culture of it’s majority.
Bhutan masquerades as a shangri-la to the hippy types. In reality, it’s just a severely underdeveloped statelet governed by a monarcho-ecclesiastic dictatorship.
This is a long read but it is an excellent myth buster of an article. This presents an accurate view of Tibetan history from a Tibetan perspective and debunks the communist/liberal propaganda of Tibet being better off under ChiCom boot heels.
How long before the ChiCom fanboys appear on this thread?
Thanks! I will read it tomorrow when I have more time. Pandy
Look right above you. #15
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.