I suppose it was nearly inevitable that having worried about not getting enough work, I would now be worried about meeting the deadlines, which is why the blog has been a bit slow.
Anyway, last weekend I took teachings from Lama Pema Dorje in a form of Tibetan yoga – a relatively gentle form, fairly safe and not “strange and secret”. I wrote about it a little more over on DangZang. Here I will just mention that it was very enjoyable. Apparently Nougat, our large new dog, missed me when I went out on Saturday morning, but then he had some sardines and a bit of a lie down:
… so everything was all right then.
I did, however, notice how security is spreading everywhere. The first time I went to put on my loose-fitting “yoga pants”, I thought it would be discreet to pop out to change in the stairwell. I had just started when a door opened and a man looked out from what I then saw was the “Chinese Massage Parlour”. I had not noticed the dome of the security camera in the ceiling, so I guess he wondered what I was up to. But no harm done! Lesson: examine environment before taking trousers off. What is a Chinese massage parlour anyway?
Feuerberg’s article summarizes a report entitled “Undermining Democracy: 21st Century Authoritarians,” released on Capitol Hill, June 4 – the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre – sponsored by Freedom House, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Asia. Its 80 pages find that four authoritarian states—China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela—are setting forth a new authoritarian model for countries to follow, and that they have the resources and sophistication to be highly influential in the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Continue reading Global Free Information?
The Sydney Morning Herald is probably the best paper around here, although the word “radical” would be a tad excessive. But this morning they not only put a story (1m 45s) about a video entitled ‘China’s brutality in Tibet exposed’ into their video section (at http://media.smh.com.au/ – though I’m not sure how long they keep their video reports there), but they even featured it on the front page! (By the way, that link just goes to the general video area at the SMH – you would have to look for this particular report yourself.)
Their front page says:
Tibet: China’s brutality on film
The Central Tibetan Administration releases ‘China’s brutality in Tibet exposed’, a documentary film of what they say are Chinese atrocities on the Tibetans.
Even this bit is not perhaps quite advised for the faint-hearted, although the paper has not shown the strongest parts of the video. The CTA clip itself can be seen at http://media.phayul.com/, and this is definitely not for the faint-hearted!
Loud chanting of battle cries, lots of cameras – when people have suffered, it’s hardly surprising that younger demonstrators can get carried away by the urge to somehow, anyhow do something!
Woke up before the 4:00 a.m. alarm to catch the bus down to Central Station for 5:00. The Sydney contingent was two full coaches plus a minibus. Dozing on the 4-hour trip to Canberra was slightly successful. Arrived late.
There were speeches outside Parliament House, a march to the Chinese Embassy, a touch of rabble-rousing chant, just enough to get some young ones to try to rush the police line, which makes for more dramatic footage. Chants like “Shame, Shame – China Shame”, “Stop Killing – In Tibet”, “Stop Torture – In Tibet”, some silence, some songs.
And that was it really. What’s the point? I think just being there to be counted usually has a point, though it’s obviously very indirect.
This March 10 is the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule – the Chinese had invaded in the early 1950s, of course.
Repression has been particularly savage all year, hence the general cancellation of the more joyful celebrations usually associated with the new year; that in turn, has brought more repression, with one monk setting fire to himself just last week in protest. He was shot before the flames were put out, and is presumed dead, but as far as I know nobody knows what happened to the body – “taken to an undisclosed location”, as they say.
So this year I plan to join the coach going to Canberra for the speeches-and-prayers do, provided I can manage to get up at shortly after 4:00 a.m.!
Last night SBS broadcast Murder in the Snow. Of course, when we see those figures falling into the snow, knowing that we are seeing, for instance, 17-year old nun Kelsang Namtso being shot dead, we react in the obvious way – outrage at the behaviour of the Chinese soldiers is not far away.
But there was something that struck me as worse. When we give guns to kids and young men, and tell them to go and “keep order” in an occupied territory, there will be atrocities. Think of the Americans at Mai Lai in Vietnam, in Iraq or at the Sand Creek massacre; the British in Northern Ireland (or, if you don’t find that convincing, go back to the days of the Black and Tans) or at the Amritsar massacre; the Japanese at the Nanking massacre; Rwanda; and on; and on.
What frightened me more was the mountaineers. There were about 100 of them in the party. Of those, two (yes, the number after one) of them, having witnessed the murder of defenceless, innocent civilians with their backs to the soldiers, saw it in the first place as their human duty to tell the story to the world. These were the Romanian cameraman Sergiu Matei and American mountain guide Luis Benitez. A couple of the others were more or less cornered into saying something later, which is some credit to them, but essentially the other 98 were more worried about their tourist visas and climbing permits than about state-sanctioned murder.
It is these “98ers” who stand by and let it all go wrong – but which of us can be sure that we are not amongst the 98? I’ve only just seen The Reader – was it not the 98ers who stood by and let Germany turn into Nazi Germany in the 1930s? Is it not 98ers everywhere who let bullying turn into bastardry and bastardry grow into atrocity?
The events of Murder in the Snow took place in 2006; it was the events of 2008 that I referred to a week ago, but in that connection I came across another graphic:
(Courtesy Lhuboom/RFA)
You can get what may have better resolution from Phayul if you want to put a copy elsewhere.
In case you don’t notice it in the listings. SBS, Thursday 19th Feb., 8:30 pm. Preview clip at the SBS website.. How Chinese border guards treat Tibetans when they don’t realize that someone is watching. Harrowing, but should be seen.
The Tibetan New year is sometimes the same as the Chinese, but sometimes a month apart. This year, the Chinese day was the 26th January, and the Tibetan will be around 25 February. Usually, of course, it’s a time of merriment, visiting, chang-drinking, fire-crackers and so on, but this year the exile community is generally not celebrating; according to the Central Administration, the official celebrations will only comprise the customary religious programmes to mark the Tibetan New Year, “taking into consideration the continuing repression in Tibet and the ruthless crackdown last year which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Tibetans and thousands imprisoned.” See, for example articles archived at the Canada Tibet Committee or at Phayul.
When will the Chinese stop being so short-sighted and realize that the Dalai Lama is not their problem – he is the solution to their Tibetan problem? If they took him on board they could manage Tibet. If they wait till he dies, Tibet will most likely be impossible to manage. Tibet could then be the first domino that brings the whole Chinese empire down.
This isn’t the interesting, focussed blog you might have been looking for…
"Pica Pica" is, as I'm sure you knew, the name for the common magpie. It's no more than a collection of bits and pieces I wanted to make available for friends and family. I have other blogs for dharma related material (at DangZang), and a small one for translation at my work site.
Writing in the Guardian, Julian Baggini referred recently to the tendency of religious people to be critical of political or social wrongs, but to be jolly nice to the representatives of other religions. He repeats an anecdote (from Simon Blackburn) in which the representatives of various faiths react to each other’s presentations, saying, “Wow, […]
It is now 20 years since, as the book itself explains, I was among the students taken by Lama Chime Rinpoche on a pilgrimage to his home monastery in Kham, eastern Tibet. We were the first group of westerners ever to have permission to enter that region. From Beijing via Xining and on to […]
Baroness Warsi has claimed that “intolerant secularisation has to be held back by reaffirming the religious foundations on which our societies are built”, while the Pope is reported to have recently attacked “atheist extremism” and “aggressive secularism”. I’m not at all sure that I would recognise “intolerant secularisation” if I came across it. “Intolerant […]
