More on Tibet
Posted on March 15, 2008 - Filed Under China, Freedom, International Politics |
From The Economist. It seems to be uglier that I at first thought:
Within a couple of hours, fires were blazing in the streets across much of the city. Some buildings caught fire too. A pall of smoke blanketed Lhasa, obscuring the ancient Potala—the city’s most famous monument, which covers a hillside overlooking the city. It is the traditional winter palace of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, who fled into exile in India after an abortive uprising in 1959. Some of the demonstrators shouted slogans like “long live Tibet” and “long live the Dalai Lama”. One group trampled on a Chinese flag in the middle of a main road.
The rioting seemed primarily an eruption of ethnic hatred. Immigrants have been flocking into Lhasa in recent years from the rest of China and now run many of its shops, small businesses and tourist facilities. Tourism is the mainstay of Lhasa’s economy and has been booming in recent years, not least thanks to Tibet’s first railway link with the rest of China, opened two years ago. The visitors are mainly Chinese.
While this behaviour is understandable to some degree, coming as it is on the back of 50 years of oppression by another ethnic group, I’d like to take this opportunity to back away from my gung-ho ‘let ‘em have it!’ attitude of few posts back. Yes, China is very much the brute of this story, but that doesn’t excuse Tibetans taking out their frustrations on Han Chinese living in Tibet.
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You caused it through some kharmic loophole.