Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Tibet

Usually in Seattle, I see "Free Tibet" bumper stickers. They live amongst other stickers that tell me that the car owner will never lift a finger to "Free" Tibet. More to it---they would actively oppose any US policy that would give the people of Tibet the tools to free themselves. Not that we would even try to give them tools.

The odds are that the people of Tibet will never be free, they will continue to be ethnically cleansed by the Han and other Chinese ethnic groups---just like countless other groups who had the misfortune to occupy land destined to be part of China over the past few thousand years---and the world will never complain too much. Someday, the Chinese people living in Tibet will be free; that I will predict.

No decisive battle will make the Tibet people free, only a long, long insurgency has a chance---and most insurgencies fail. Ten to fifteen years of frenetic anti-Chinese fighting would have to pass before success or failure could be determined.

If the people choose to do so, I say good luck to you. Also, I can give them the words of Winston S Churchill, slightly rewritten:
Death and sorrow will be the companions of your journey; hardship your garment; constancy and valor your only shield.

Bjork has done all she can by shouting your name at a concert in Shanghai, now blood will tell.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Tibet's been through this a few times over the centuries with China and Mongolia, and usually they were able to pull through. It was different this time when the chinese started knocking the temples down and moving people in. But we're a few decades too late to save what Tibet was.

Kyle Hopgoddess said...

Yup, before I was born, even.