Yu wrote:
> by Floyd Rudmin
>
> We hear that Tibetans suffer “demographic aggression” and “cultural
> genocide”. But we do not hear those terms applied to Spanish and
> French policies toward the Basque minority. We do not hear those terms
> applied to the US annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1898. And
> Diego Garcia? In 1973, not so long ago, the UK forcibly de****ted the
> entire native Chagossian population from the Indian Ocean island of
> Diego Garcia. People were allowed one suitcase of clothing. Nothing
> else. Family pets were gassed, then cremated. Complete ethnic
> cleansing. Complete cultural destruction. Why? In order to build a big
> US air base. It has been used to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq, and soon
> maybe to bomb Iran and Pakistan. Diego Garcia, with nobody there but
> Brits and Americans, is also a perfect place for rendition, torture
> and other illegal actions.
>
> When the Olympics come to London in 2012, the Dalai Lama and Desmond
> Tutu will certainly lead the demonstrators protesting the “demographic
> aggression” and “cultural genocide” in Diego Garcia. The UN Secretary
> General, the President of France, the Chancellor of Germany, the new
> US President and the entire US Congress will certainly boycott the
> opening ceremonies.
>
> The height of hypocrisy is this moral posturing about 100 dead in race
> riots in Lhasa, while the USA, UK and more than 40 nations in the
> Coalition of the Willing wage a war of aggression against Iraq. This
> is not “demographic aggression” but raw shock-and-awe aggression. A
> war crime. A war on civilians, including the intentional destruction
> of the water and sewage systems, and the electrical grid. More than
> one million Iraqis are now dead; five million made into refugees. The
> Western invaders may not be doing “cultural genocide” but they are
> doing cultural destruction on an immense scale, in the very cradle of
> Western Civilization. Why is the news filled with demonstrators about
> Tibet but not about Iraq?
>
> And as everyone knows but few dare say, “demographic aggression” and
> “cultural genocide” can be applied most accurately to Israel’s
> settlement policies and systematic destruction of Palestinian
> communities. On this, the Dalai Lama seems silent. Demonstrators don’t
> wave flags for bulldozed homes, destroyed orchards, or dead
> Palestinian children.
>
> The Chinese Context
>
> The Chinese government is responsible for the well-being and security
> of one-fourth of humanity. Race riots and rebellion cannot be
> tolerated, not even when done by Buddhist monks.
>
> Chinese Civilization was already old when the Egyptians began building
> pyramids. But the last 200 years have not gone well, what with two
> Opium Wars forcing China to im****t drugs, and Europeans seizing
> coastal ****ts as a step to complete colonial control, then the Boxer
> Rebellion, the collapse of the Manchu Dynasty, civil war, a brutal
> invasion and occupation by Japan, more civil war, then Communist
> consolidation and transformation of society, then Mao’s Cultural
> Revolution. Such events caused tens of millions of people to die.
> Thus, China’s recent history has good reasons why social order is a
> higher priority than individual rights. Race riots and rebellion
> cannot be tolerated.
>
> Considering this context, China’s treatment of its minorities has been
> exemplary compared to what the Western world has done to its
> minorities. After thousands of years of Chinese dominance, there still
> are more than 50 minorities in China. After a few hundred years of
> European dominance in North and South America, the original minority
> cultures have been exterminated, damaged, or diminished.
>
> Chinese currency carries five languages: Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan,
> Uigur, and Zhuang. In comparison, Canadian currency carries English
> and French, but no Cree or Inuktitut. If the USA were as considerate
> of ethnic minorities as is China, then the greenback would be written
> in English, Spanish, Cherokee and Hawaiian.
>
> In China, ethnic minorities begin their primary schooling in their own
> language, in a school administered by one of their own community.
> Chinese language instruction is not introduced until age 10 or later.
> This is in sharp contrast to a history of coerced linguistic
> assimilation in most Western nations. The Australian government
> recently apologized to the Aboriginal minority for taking children
> from their families, forcing them to speak English, beating them if
> they spoke their mother tongue. China has no need to make such apology
> to Tibetans or to other minorities.
>
> China’s one-child-policy seems oppressive to Westerners, but it has
> not applied to minorities, only to the Han Chinese. Tibetans can have
> as many children as they choose. If Han people have more than one
> child, they are punished.
>
> There is a similar preference given to minorities when it comes to
> admission to universities. For example, Tibetan students enter China’s
> elite Peking University with lower exam scores than Han Chinese
> students.
>
> China is not a perfect nation, but on matters of minority rights, it
> has been better than most Western nations. And China achieved this in
> the historical context of restoring itself and recovering from 200
> years of continual crisis and foreign invasion.
>
> Historical Claims
>
> National boundaries are not natural. They all arise from history, and
> all history is disputable. Arguments and evidence can always be found
> to challenge a boundary. China has long claimed Tibet as part of its
> territory, though that has been hard to enforce during the past 200
> years. The Dalai Lama does not dispute China’s claim to Tibet. The
> recent race riots in Tibet and the anti-Olympics demonstrations will
> not cause China to shrink itself and abandon part of its territory.
> Rioters and demonstrators know that.
>
> Foreign governments promoting Tibet separatism and demonstrators
> demanding Tibet independence should look closer to home. Canadians can
> campaign for Québec libre. Americans can sup****t separatists in Puerto
> Rico, Vermont, Texas, California, Hawaii, Guam, and Alaska. Brits can
> work for a free Wales, and Scotland for the Scots. French can help
> free Tahitians, New Caledonians, Corsicans, and the Basques. Spaniards
> can also back the Basques, or the Catalonians. Italians can help
> Sicilian separatists or the Northern League. Danes can free the Faeroe
> Islands. Poles can back Cashubians. Japanese can help Okinawan
> separatists, and Filipinos can help the Moros. Thai can promote
> Patanni independence; Indonesians can promote Acehnese independence.
> New Zealanders can leave the islands to the Maori; Australians can
> vacate Papua. Sri Lankans can help Tamil separatists; Indians can help
> Sikh separatists.
>
> Nearly every nation has a separatist movement of some kind. There is
> no need to go to Tibet, to the top of the world, to promote ethnic
> separatism. China is not promoting separatism in other nations and
> does not appreciate other nations promoting separatism in China. The
> people most oppressed, most needing a nation of their own, are the
> Palestinians. There is a worthy project to promote and to demonstrate
> about.
>
> Danger of Demonstrations
>
> These demonstrations do not serve Tibetans, but rather use Tibetans
> for ulterior motives. Many Tibetans, therefore, oppose these
> demonstrations. Many Chinese remember their history and see the riots
> in Lhasa and subsequent demonstrations as another attempt by foreign
> powers to dismember and weaken China. There is grave danger that
> Chinese might come to fear Tibetans as traitors, resulting in wide
> spread anti-Tibetan feelings in China.
>
> Fear that an ethnic minority serves foreign forces caused Canada,
> during World War 1, to imprison its Ukranian minority in concentration
> camps. For similar reasons, the Ottomans de****ted their Armenian
> minority and killed more than a million in death marches. The German
> Nazis saw the Jewish minority as traitors who caused defeat in World
> War 1; hence de****tations in the 1930s and death camps in the 1940s.
> During World War 2, both Canada and the USA feared that their Japanese
> immigrant minorities were traitorous and de****ted them to
> concentration camps. Indonesians fearing their Chinese minority,
> de****ted 100,000 in 1959 and killed thousands more in 1965. Israel
> similarly fears its Arab minority, resulting in de****tations and
> oppression.
>
> Hopefully, the Chinese government and the Chinese people will see
> Tibetans as victims of foreign powers rather than agents of foreign
> powers. However, if China reacts like other nations have in history
> and starts systematic severe repression of Tibetans, then today’s
> demonstrators should remember their role in causing that to happen.
>
> Conclusion
>
> The demonstrators now disparaging China serve only to distract
> themselves and others from seeing and correcting the current failings
> of their own governments. If the demonstrators will take a moment to
> listen, they will hear the silence of their own hypocrisy.
>
> The consequences of these demonstrations are 1) China will stiffen its
> resolve to find foreign influences inciting Tibetans to riot, and 2)
> the governments of the USA, UK, France and other Western nations will
> have less domestic criticism for a few weeks. That is all. These
> demonstrations can come to no good end.
tl;dr
Thats what China gets for having a crappy, oppressive government that
actually does physical crackdowns on groups of people it thinks are unfit.
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