this is just so painful to watch but necessary. everyone should be aware of issues like this and not be shut inside a cocoon of apathy. puts life into perspective, really, when you see how it's lived by people much less fortunate.

I would say help burst your cocoon of apathy by supporting your fellow humans who are suffering greatly, and boycott the Beinjing Olympics, especially if China refuses to treat the Tibetans humanely.

it's great that you're doing this to raise awareness. i'm curious to know how you (or anyone else) feel/s about the Dalai Lama getting political.

What do you mean "getting" political?

In the 17th century, the Dalai Lama was designated both the spiritual and political leader of Tibet.  He has served of the leader of the Tibetan government since then.  From 1959 until just a few years ago he served as the Leader of the Tibetan-government-in -exile.  Within the last few years (not sure of the exact year) he gave up his political position, and now he only officially holds a position of Spiritual Leadership of Tibet.  So the position of Dalai Lama has been very political, since almost its inception.  It was the 5th Dalai Lama who united Tibet  in the 17th century, and ever since then, whenever a Dalai Lama existed, he was in charge of the country.  (The current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the 14th)

So, I have no problems with him being political.  It is interesting to compare what he is saying and doing to other Tibetans, especially young ones.

He does and has been for at least the last two decades been promoting a Middle Way with China.  He does not seek complete freedom and secession from China, but Autonomy within China.  He is willing to allow the Chinese Government to maintain jurisdiction over the physical land mass, but he wants the Tibetan people to have cultural and religious freedom, as right now they do not.  (For instance, in all remaining monasteries in Tibet the monks are required to undergo government regulated re-education programs).  He has maintained that the Tibetans protest must alwasy be a peaceful one, because, in their case, anything else would "be equivalent to suicide."

Not all younger Tibetans agree.  While all Tibetans hold much love and respect for him in the hearts, many younger Tibetans are demanding complete separation from China, and are willing to engage in more violent/aggressive protests.  Similarly, His Holiness does not say that China should not host the 2008 Olympics, he just says they should treat Tibetans humanely and this can be a moment when they prove theyre committed to equal rights.  Younger Tibetans say that China is not wqorthy and will not ever be worthy of hosting the games. 

Additionally, he has openly said that he does not have the power to stop the current protests.  He has admitted that he has received calls from people who have asked him NOT to request an end to the protests, because if he did that many would stop, and he has said that he cannot in good conscience request that Tibetans stop protesting this injustice.  However, in at least one of the articles I link to above he openly says he does not have the actually power or authority to stop these protests even if he wanted to, they are the result of decades upon decades of oppression.

If you read any of his quotes throughout the last 40 or so years, he has maintained the same position throughout most of it.  He wnats complete autonomy for Tibet, not separation, and he really gives China the benefit of the doubt.  He is much, much kinder to the Chinese and the Chinese government than most Western critics, including Western Buddhists. 

So I have no problem with him being political.  He always has been.  And he has always fought for full equality for ALL people, and has always only promoted non-violent means of attaining that.

This article does a great job of explaining HHDL's current stance, as well as some other Tibetans opinions:

"Dalai Lama Won't Stop Tibet Protests"

(from NY Times online)

MCLEODGANJ, India — The Dalai Lama said Sunday that he would not instruct his followers inside Tibet to surrender before Chinese authorities, and he described feeling “helpless” in preventing what he feared could be an imminent blood bath.

“I do feel helpless,” he said in response to a question at a wide-ranging, emotionally charged news conference here in what has served as the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile for nearly 40 years. “I feel very sad, very serious, very anxious. Cannot do anything,”

His aides said they had received reports from Tibet of 80 killings on Thursday and Friday alone, in and around the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, including 26 slain just outside a prison called Drapchi. Chinese state media has reported 10 deaths and characterized most of them as shopkeepers ”burned to death” during protests.

Tibetan exiles here said they had also received news of at least two Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire as an act of protest; that claim could not be independently confirmed.

For the second straight day on Sunday, protests spread into different Tibetan regions of China. Buddhist monks and police reportedly clashed in a Tibetan region of Sichuan Province. A crowd of 200 Tibetan protesters burned down a local police station, news agencies reported.

One witness said a police officer was killed in the confrontation. But the India-based Tibet Center for Human Rights and Democracy reported that the police in the region had killed at least seven Tibetan protesters.

The Dalai Lama, who heads the government in exile and serves as the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, called Sunday for an independent international inquiry into the recent violence.

He endorsed the right to peaceful protest, called violence an “act of suicide,” and accused Beijing of carrying out “a rule of terror.”

Asked if he could stop Tibetan protesters from flouting Beijing’s deadline to surrender by midnight on Monday, the Dalai Lama, 72, replied swiftly: “I have no such power.”

He said he had received a call on Saturday from Tibet. “‘Please don’t ask us to stop,’” was the caller’s request. The Dalai Lama promised he would not, even though he said he expected the Chinese authorities to put down the protests with force.

“Now we really need miracle power,” he said, and then laughed. “But miracle seems unrealistic.”

As he entertained questions for over an hour here inside a temple in the lap of snow-capped Himalayas, the limits of his influence, and even his “middle path” message of freedom for Tibetans, rather than total independence for Tibet, came into sharp relief, as thousands of mostly young Tibetan exiles raised a chorus of stridently anti-Chinese slogans and called for secession.

“We the young people feel independence is our birthright,” said Dolma Choephel, 34, a social worker active with the Tibetan Youth Congress and who gathered Sunday morning at a demonstration outside the gates of the main town temple. “We understand the limitations of the Dalai Lama’s approach. What we got after six rounds of talks — this violence?” She was referring to the six negotiating sessions between the Dalai Lama and Chinese authorities since 2002.

Just behind where Ms. Choephel stood, Buddhist monks began a hunger strike. Protesters laid down Chinese flags on the road, inviting cars and pedestrians to trample on them. Later, thousands streamed down the hill, to Dharamsala town, the largest Tibetan settlement in India. Many of them had painted their faces with the colors of the Tibetan flag. “Long live the Dalai Lama,” they chanted, which made it plain that despite their far more radical calls, they remained loyal to his spiritual leadership.

Late Sunday evening, candles were lit on window sills and balconies across these hills. Tibetan-owned shops were closed in solidarity with the demonstrations across the border.

The Indian authorities, meanwhile, found themselves in an uncomfortable diplomatic spot. The Indian police earlier last week had arrested a group of demonstrators who vowed to walk roughly 900 miles from here to Lhasa, but allowed a second group to set off Saturday morning unimpeded.

India has hosted Tibetan refugees since the Dalai Lama’s exodus in 1959, but on condition that they not protest against Chinese government on Indian soil. New Delhi’s efforts to warm up to Beijing in recent years has made the Tibet issue an exceptionally tricky matter. The Dalai Lama, while acknowledging Indian hospitality to Tibetan refugees — there are an estimated 130,000 Tibetans in India — described the official government position on Tibet as “overcautious.”

A young Tibetan monk was less circumspect about government restrictions on the proposed march from India to Tibet. After all, said Tenzin Damchoe, the Indian-born child of Tibetan refugees, Tibetans had learned the art of the peaceful protest march from Gandhi. “It’s a little bit disgrace,” Mr. Damchoe, 30, said.

As for the revolt inside Tibet, he said he could only imagine the worst. “They crushed their own people,” he said of the Chinese response to the Tianemen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989. “There’s no doubt they will crush the Tibetan people.”

The Dalai Lama, for his part, seemed unfazed about the dissent among Tibetans over full independence versus greater autonomy. Even his elder brother, he recalled, had admonished him many years ago for not advocating independence from China. “ ‘My dear younger brother, the Dalai Lama,’ ” his brother told him. “ ‘You sold out the Tibetan legitimate right. Like that.’ ”

The Dalai Lama described dissent as “a healthy sign of our commitment to democracy, open society.”

Chuckling, he added that the idea might come as “a surprise to our Chinese brothers and sisters.”

He described himself as a Marxist Buddhist, quoted Mao Zedong’s endorsement of dissent in the party, and blamed local Communist Party officials inside Tibet, rather than the party leadership in Beijing, for what he called the rise of government repression against Tibetan Buddhists in the last couple of years.

He accused Chinese officials of resorting only to force when confronted with a crisis. “They have no experience how to deal with problems through talk, only suppress,” he said.

Asked several times whether he endorsed the protests, which had at times had turned violent over the last week, the Dalai Lama said Tibetans were entitled to air their grievances peacefully. “Protest, peaceful way, express their deep resentment is a right,” he said.

He said he was aware that the Chinese government blamed him for fomenting rebellion. “I’m happy they found some scapegoat,” he said, in half-jest, and then described what he said were deep-rooted grievances.

“Whether the Chinese government admits it or not, there is a problem. The problem is a nation with ancient cultural heritage is actually facing serious dangers,” he said. “Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some kind of cultural genocide is taking place.”

He maintained that he was not calling for secession from China “in terms of material development is concerned.” “We get much benefits,” from being a part of China, as he put it and said he could endorse only nonviolent protest. He said he remained supportive of China’s hosting of the Olympic Games, but called on the international community to exercise its “moral responsibility” to remind Beijing about human rights.

i should have phrased my question as getting political again.

thanks for the insight. i'm not well-versed with the history of Tibet and this adds to what little i know. i remember last year when there was news that he was moving into retirement  and being less active politically. i think it's fantastic that he's speaking again, unfortunately about the same issue he's been condemning for years.

Hooray, Barack!

"The diplomatic condemnation was led by Barack Obama, the American Democratic presidential hopeful, who warned China's leaders that the eyes of the world were upon them in an Olympic year.

Mr Obama said he was deeply disturbed by reports of a crackdown and arrests, and called on the Chinese government to respect the basic human rights of the people of Tibet.

"This is the year of the Beijing Olympics. It represents an opportunity for China to show the world what it has accomplished in the last several decades," he said. "Those accomplishments have been extraordinary and China's people have a right to be proud of them, but the events in Tibet these last few days unfortunately show a different face of China." "

( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/15/wtibet81... )

I think the 84 olympics in LA were the first olympics that I was aware of and I've done my part by not bothering to watch that boring spectacle every year since. Free Tibet!

Oops... Need to correct myself... Apparently, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is STILL the political leader of Tibetan government-in-exile.  Apparently he in the past was discussing stepping down, but he never actually did.  In a press conference today (Tuesday) he said he would step down as political leader is the violence worsens.  (This is probably in part because China is blaming him, single-handedly, for all of the violence, even though he repeatedly calls for non-violent protests.  He is willing to sacrifice his position if it might mean that China will engage in some sort of discourse with him.  Which they most likely will never due, no matter what he gives up.)

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/18/tibet.unrest/index.html

http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?id=20005&article=China+Blasts+Da...

China Blasts Dalai Lama, Pelosi on Tibet

CHENGDU, China (AP) - China accused the Dalai Lama on Sunday of stoking Tibetan unrest to sabotage the Beijing Olympics and also berated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying she is ignoring the truth about Tibet.

This month's violence in Tibet and neighboring provinces has turned into a public relations disaster for China ahead of the August Olympics, which it had been hoping to use to bolster its international image.
 

The Chinese government said through official media that formerly restive areas were under control and accused the Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, of trying to harm China's image ahead of the summer games.
 

``The Dalai clique is scheming to take the Beijing Olympics hostage to force the Chinese government to make concessions to Tibet independence,'' said the People's Daily, the main mouthpiece of the Communist Party.
 

The Tibetan spiritual leader called the accusations against him ``baseless,'' asserting that he supported China's hosting of the summer games.
 

``I always support (that) the Olympics should ... take place in Beijing ... so that more than 1 billion human beings, that means Chinese, they feel proud of it,'' he said Sunday in New Delhi, India.
 

Pelosi's visit to the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala, India, on Friday was the first by a major foreign official since the protests broke out. The Democratic leader said if people don't speak out against China's oppression in Tibet, ``we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world.''
 

China's official Xinhua New Agency published commentary Sunday accusing Pelosi of ignoring the violence caused by the Tibetan rioters.
 

``'Human rights police' like Pelosi are habitually bad tempered and ungenerous when it comes to China, refusing to check their facts and find out the truth of the case,'' it said.
 

``Her views are like so many other politicians and western media. Beneath the double standards lies their intention to serve the interest groups behind them, who want to contain or smear China,'' it said.
 

China's reported death toll from the protests in the Tibetan capital Lhasa earlier this month is 22. Tibet's exiled government says 99 Tibetans have been killed.
 

Xinhua said Sunday that 94 people had been injured in four counties and one city in Gansu province in riots on March 15-16. The report also said 19 rioters had surrendered in Gannan, a prefecture in Gansu, but it did not give any details.
 

Despite the media restrictions imposed by the Chinese government, some information was leaking out. An American backpacker who traveled to Chengdu, the capital of western Sichuan province, said he had seen soldiers or paramilitary troops in Deqen in northwest Yunnan province, which borders Tibet.
 

``What was an empty parking lot by the library was full of military trucks and people practicing with shields. I saw hundreds of soldiers,'' said the backpacker, who would give only his first name, Ralpha.
 

There have been no reported protests in Yunnan.
 

Monks at the Gedan Song Zan Monastery outside of Zhongdian in northwest Yunnan prayed Sunday for peace and an end to the recent unrest among ethnic Tibetan populations in China. The monks, who characterized themselves as both Tibetan and Chinese, said they felt that the upheaval and riots had helped no one.
 

The government has insisted that stability has returned to the troubled areas. State broadcaster China Central Television said Sunday that electricity and telecommunications had been restored in Lhasa.
 

The official lighting of the Olympic torch is set for Monday in Greece, and some 1,000 police will surround Ancient Olympia to keep away pro-Tibetan protesters from the ceremony. The torch is scheduled to travel through 20 countries before the Beijing Olympics open on Aug. 8.
 

One of Thailand's six torchbearers withdrew Sunday in protest. Environmentalist Narisa Chakrabongse said in an open letter that she decided against taking part in the relay to ``send a strong message to China that the world community could not accept its actions.''
 

Meanwhile, a group hosting the Dalai Lama's visit to Germany May 14-20 said Sunday that the trip was still scheduled to take place. The trip is to include meetings between the Dalai Lama and various German state leaders.

March 26, 2008

Unrest at Shuttered Gateway to Tibet

By JAKE HOOKER

CHENGDU, China — In the back room of a Tibetan teahouse, three robed monks spoke in whispers.

One monk said his home in Luhuo County had been littered with fliers calling on Tibetans to protest. A second monk said soldiers had surrounded his monastery in Aba County. The third dialed home. After folding shut his cellphone, he said the police had killed one Tibetan protester and injured nine others in Serta County.

“Tibetans are dying for no reason,” said the Luhuo monk, as the whine of a police siren drifted through an open window. “But this is happening in remote places, and nobody knows.”

From this city of 10 million people in the middle of China, all roads leading west have been closed — except to convoys carrying soldiers and riot police officers to subdue Tibetan antigovernment protests. Chengdu has always been a gateway to the remote Tibetan plateau, but now it feels like a border outpost, tense and anxious, at the eastern edge of what several Tibetans here described as a war.

If it is a war, it is one the outside world cannot see. Police roadblocks have closed off a mountainous region about the size of France, spanning parts of the provinces of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai. Foreign journalists trying to investigate reports of bloodshed are turned away or detained. Even in big cities like Chengdu, Tibetans say they are wary of police retaliation. They pass along secondhand accounts of clashes mostly on condition that their names will not appear in print.

What seems clear is that in the isolated region west of Chengdu, the sometimes violent protests, already the broadest and most sustained agitation against Chinese rule in two decades, have continued despite the influx of armed security forces. Lhasa itself is now under heel. But a vast area of highlands and placid villages, where Tibetan life usually centers on temples and monasteries built of wood and earth, remains a battle zone.

On Tuesday, protesters and the police clashed in Garze, a prefecture of Sichuan, state media and a Tibetan rights group said. Some 200 monks and nuns began a march earlier in the day that turned violent when the police sought to suppress the crowd, the India-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.

China’s Xinhua news agency said the police opened fire in self-defense after the demonstrators attacked them with knives and stones. The rights group said one 18-year-old monk was killed and another was critically injured, while Xinhua said protesters killed one policeman.

In Chengdu, Tibetans gravitate to a neighborhood that is beside an ancient Chinese temple called Wuhouci. The area is known for a teeming marketplace that sells Tibetan Buddhist ceremonial objects, clothing and art. Usually, Tibetan monks and traders pass through the market, buying crimson robes or printed scriptures, but the police lockdown has left many people stranded and desperate for news from home.

“Do you know how many died in Aba?” asked Nyima, 28, a monk from the Garong monastery in Nyagrong County. He has lived in Chengdu for three months, sleeping above his shop.

After the unrest in Lhasa, violent clashes between Tibetans and security forces erupted in Aba. Officials later said the police fired in self-defense on a crowd of Tibetans that had attacked the local police station and set it on fire. Tibetans who have called relatives in Aba say the death toll may be more than 20; that could not be independently confirmed.

A young Tibetan woman from Aba who sells Buddhist statues and jewelry at a local shop said her family was safe but had also warned her that the conflict in Aba had not yet ended. “They are fighting a war,” said the woman.

A Tibetan college student from Aba had also made a worried call home. His relatives described a confrontation that began at the local Kirti monastery. The student’s family said a huge contingent of soldiers arrived with weapons. “People got very nervous,” the student said. In recent years, authorities tightened religious restrictions, including closing down a religious school.

On March 16, protests began at Aba after a monk at Kirti declared that Tibetans should not have to live under Chinese rule. Protesters holding images of the Dalai Lama marched through the streets, the student said.

The police initially did not stop them. But when protesters burned a police station, soldiers with machine guns fired into crowds, killing at least 13 Tibetans, the student said. He said several Chinese soldiers had been killed.

“The next day, the town looked green with the soldiers,” he said. “Every day, helicopters hover over the city.”

The police said Chengdu itself is secure. But the Wuhouci neighborhood is enduring its own lockdown. Armed police officers now surround the neighborhood. White patrol cars cruise the streets, flashing their lights as officers bark through megaphones at vehicles to keep them moving.

Last week, the local police called a news conference to dispel rumors of a bomb threat. Chinese shopkeepers gossiped about reports that a Tibetan man from Aba had stabbed and killed two Han Chinese in the city. The police confirmed that a stabbing had occurred but said a single victim had only minor injuries.

Monks and other Tibetans are meeting in quiet corners. In the back room of the Tibetan teahouse, the three monks compared notes. One, age 40, told news of Serta County, where he said Tibetans had taken over a government compound and raised the Tibetan national flag.

Another monk had come to Chengdu from Aba to purchase printed Buddhist scriptures. Now, he gathered information by telephone. Armed police officers had circled six monasteries in Aba and arrested “many, many” monks, he said. He was told that 23 people had died so far, even though China’s state-run media has reported only four injuries.

Two days later, one of the three monks again called his hometown of Luhuo. “The sound of gunfire can be heard in Luhuo,” the monk said. “A lama died. A soldier died. They are fighting a war now.”

Jimmy Wang contributed reporting from Chengdu, and Jim Yardley from Beijing.

China lulls handful of foreign journalists with two-day trip to Lhasa

Phayul[Wednesday, March 26, 2008 18:56]

By Phurbu Thinley

Dharamsala, March 26: China on Wednesday allowed into the Tibetan capital Lhasa the first group of foreign journalists to visit since the protests intensified in Lhasa and turned violent.

China’s decision to allow foreign media for the first time, in more than two weeks of crackdown in Tibet, comes when it is already reeling under intense international pressure to end repressive measures in Tibet and show more transparency about the situation therein. The decision also comes amid growing threats of possible boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Although a small group of foreign media is now taken to Lhasa for a two-day coverage, it is still unclear how these journalists will be allowed to report on the situation.

“It was unclear how much freedom the small group of foreign reporters would have over the two-day trip, which comes amid rising international pressure over the government crackdown less than five months ahead of the Beijing Olympics,” the Associated Press reported.

Chinese media have been seen thoroughly censored by the authorities in their reporting of the unrests inside Tibet and are directed to relate only the one-sided story of the government.

In the absence of foreign media, Chinese authorities have released images and television footage of violent people, purportedly to be Tibetans, accusing them of inciting violence in Lhasa. Eyewitnesses, however, point out that those shown in some pictures were actually Chinese police in Tibetan outfits sent out by authorities to incite communal violence among Han Chinese and Tibetans that would give authorities justification for their violent crackdown.

The Chinese government says at least 22 people have died in Lhasa. However, the Tibetan Government-in-Exile based in India on Monday put the number of death toll at about 140, including 19 killed in Gansu province outside the so called Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). The government also released a list of identified Tibetans, saying it had reliable information on other individuals killed during the demonstrations.

Since the first peaceful protests broke out in Lhasa on March 10, Chinese authorities took no time in flooding Lhasa and other Tibetan areas with military troops and armed police, creating an atmosphere, described by many, as being similar to the martial law situation imposed in 1989.

Authorities also quickly sealed off Tibet from foreign reporters and tourists, making it extremely difficult to verify information. Authorities have also sought to stop the foreign press from travelling to Tibetan areas in Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces where fierce protests have broken out.

Despite mounting international pressure on Chinese Government to show restraint in dealing with situation in Tibet, Tibetan demonstrators were seen brutally crushed down by armed police, often opening gun fire indiscriminately into the crowd of protesters, mainly led by Buddhist monks, in other Tibetans regions outside the TAR.

Fearing worst repression for Tibetans inside Tibet, the exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Government-in-Exile have repeatedly called on international community to persuade China to allow independent fact-finding missions and foreign media to monitor the situation inside Tibet instead of relying on one-sided information from Chinese government.

Tibetan Government on Tuesday said a monk from Ramoche Monastery in Lhasa died of starvation on March 24, after Chinese authorities sealed the monastery and cut off food and water supply since March 14.

China’s decision to take foreign journalists on Wednesday is seen by media to be among show of control after violence. “The moves appear calculated to bolster government claims that authorities are in control of the situation and that the protests that began peacefully were acts of destruction and murder,” the Associated Press said in its report.

China has routinely announced the surrender of hundreds of people over anti-government protests since last week. Tibetan exiles rebuff such claims as being usual propaganda campaigns set up by Chinese authorities, and fear worst torture and inhumane treatment would be meted out to those Tibetans arrested during the protests.

Many observers and China dissidents have begun condemning Chinese government for orchestrating the violence in Tibet inorder to justify their brutal crackdown on Tibetans demonstrators. A group of 30 China dissidents signed a petition on March 22 calling on China to come out clean from unverified propaganda claims it has been making since the protest broke out in Lhasa.