[Peace-discuss] Tibet and hypocrisy

Tue Apr 15 08:06:15 CDT 2008

This article is excellent.  The Chinese human rights record is really not that much worse than the US's, if at 
all.   I mean the Chinese didn't eradicate the people of a whole continent and enslave large numbers from 
another in order to build their civilization.  So, at least they have always been off to a much cleaner 
start....

----------------------  Original Message:  ---------------------
From:    "Brussel Morton K." <mkbrussel at comcast.net>
To:      Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Tibet and hypocrisy
Date:    Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:51:32 +0000

> I thinnk he says it all.
> 
> Published on Monday, April 14, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
> 
> The Hypocrisy and Danger of Anti-China Demonstrations
> 
> 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 deported  
> 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 import drugs, and Europeans  
> seizing coastal ports 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 support 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 deported 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 deportations 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  
> deported them to concentration camps. Indonesians fearing their  
> Chinese minority, deported 100,000 in 1959 and killed thousands more  
> in 1965. Israel similarly fears its Arab minority, resulting in  
> deportations 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.
> 
> Floyd Rudmin can be contacted by email. 
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