Campus protests

The NY Times has an article concerning how the fallout from the Tibet unrest is playing on US campuses.

Universities have often tried to accommodate the anger of their Chinese students. Before the Dalai Lama’s visit to the University of Washington, the campus Chinese Students and Scholars Association wrote to the university president expressing hopes that the visit would focus only on nonpolitical issues and not arouse anti-China sentiments. According to a posting on the group’s Web site, the university president, Mark A. Emmert, told them in a meeting that no political questions would be raised at the Dalai Lama’s speech. A spokesman said the university, which opened an office in Beijing last fall, had prescreened student questions before the Chinese students voiced their concerns.

Some experts say that colleges feel constrained from reining in the more extreme protests through a combination of concerns about cultural sensitivity and a desire to expand their own ties with China.

Defending the free expression of ideas is the mission of a university. University presidents that prioritize overseas expansion opportunities or "cultural sensitivity" betray the mission of the university. Such administrators are a disgrace to the ideal of the university.

China foreign ministry will not condemn Chinese hooligans at torch relays

I have blogged about the torch relays in East and Southeast Asia. There have been various reports of pro-Tibet protesters getting harassed and attacked by Chinese demonstrators. AFP reports that China's foreign ministry has chosen not to condemn the behavior of abusive pro-China people:

"Some Chinese students came out to safeguard the dignity of the torch. I believe that's natural," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said when asked to comment on the clashes.

"Perhaps there were some radical actions, but we should recognise the real situation there."

China, which has repeatedly denounced anti-Chinese mayhem in earlier legs of the torch relay, declined to directly condemn the behaviour of its own students when invited to do so by journalists at a briefing in Beijing.

"We condemn large-scale violent demonstrations. As to the Chinese students and overseas Chinese, they just had some frictions with those who disrupted and sabotaged the torch relay there. That's totally different," Ms Jiang said.

Totally different.

Ahmadiyah Sect mosque burned in Indonesia

A mosque belonging to followers of the Ahmadiyah Sect was burned by rioters in West Java, Indonesia this week. The sect, believed to have between 200,000 and two million followers in Indonesia, has coexisted with mainstream Muslims in the island country for over 100 years. Many adherents live on the island of Lombok which is near Bali.

The attack was the latest to target the Ahmadiyah sect in Indonesia, the country with the largest number of Muslims in the world. Hard-liners claim that the sect, founded in 1889 in Pakistan, was devised by British colonialists to divide Muslims.

The Ahmadiyah sect, part of the Sufi strain of Islam, refuses to accept Muhammad as Islam's final prophet. The group claims its founder to be a prophet and messiah.

A team of prosecutors, religious scholars and government officials said April 16 that the sect "had deviated from Islamic principles" and recommended it be outlawed. Four Ahmadiyah mosques have been destroyed in Indonesia since that announcement, and the sect has been subject to other acts of vandalism. (IHT)

Today, the Jakarta Post reports that a coalition of civil society groups is petitioning Indonesian president Bambang Yudhoyono not to ban the group, citing fears that this move would encourage further violence against Ahmadiyah sect members.

Indonesia's democratic leaders seem unwilling to stand up to pressure from hard-line Islamic groups, despite the fact that they speak for only a minority of Indonesian Muslims. On a positive note, last week an Indonesian court declared a group which sponsored the Bali bombings, Jemaah Islamiyah, to be a terrorist organization. The Indonesian government had previously refused to declare it as such.

Because Indonesia's political leaders seem scared to offend hard-line Islamic groups, let us hope the country's courts are up to the task of defending the secular state. Corruption here seems to be getting worse; and with food prices rising -- in this food and energy rich nation -- the poverty rate is likewise poised to rise. The religious extremists may attempt to take advantage of this situation, made worse by a perceived leadership vacuum.

For now, the West should offer far greater support to Indonesia's education system.

Olympic torch relay protests in Seoul South Korea

One man tried to set himself on fire and a journalist was hit in the head with a rock when a large group of Chinese started throwing stones and bottles at a smaller group of Tibetan protesters. This, according to AP:

The man who tried to immolate himself, 45-year-old Son Jong Hoon, had led an unsuccessful public campaign to save his brother from execution in the North, where he was accused of spying after the two met secretly in China. About an hour into the relay, Son poured gasoline on himself and tried to light himself on fire, but police stopped him.

At the start of the relay, a protester rushed toward the Olympic flame and tried to unfurl a banner calling for China to respect the rights of North Korean refugees. Dozens of police surrounding the torch quickly whisked him away. As it approached the city center, another North Korean defector also tried to impede the run and was arrested. . . .

Scuffles broke out near the park between a group of 500 Chinese supporters and about 50 demonstrators. The Chinese side threw stones and water bottles at the others as some 2,500 police tried to keep the two groups apart.

A rock hit a journalist in the head, but there were apparently no other injuries.

Sadly, this is not the first instance in which acts of violence have been perpetrated by Chinese supporters against Tibetan protesters. I have posted concerning reports of similar incidents in Sydney and Kuala Lumpur.

I live-blogged torch relays in Bangkok and Jakarta. CNN noted in story about the Seoul relay: "In other recent Asian legs of the relay, a large number of Chinese students have attended. In Bangkok, Thailand, students told CNN the Chinese Embassy there provided their transportation and gave them shirts to wear." This does not surprise me. Why did the Chinese Embassies not give their demonstrators instructions about how to behave. . . or did they?

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Update: Beth is live-blogging the relay from Seoul. She has posted some photos and writes:

...what a day it's been! I was (literally) in the middle of a clash today between hundreds and hundreds of Chinese people and a small group of anti-China protestors as the Olympic Torch made its way through Seoul.

Beth says she took an "amazing video" which she presently trying to edit.

Update #2: Julia protested (for Tibet) and live-blogging the Seoul relay. She has lots of photos and tells an interesting story; about what it was like for her and her friends to cope with the Chinese students. I thought this passage was hilarious:

To lighten the mood a little Rodney, myself and some others started to sing the Backstreet Boys song, "I Want It That Way". The funniest thing ever happened, once we started to sing the song the Chinese thought we were singing some chant in favor of Tibet, so they started their chants again. It was hysterical. Rodney and I kept singing after everyone else stopped including the Chinese because we knew all the words, so we had to finish the song and it was hysterical to see the Chinese students faces while we were singing.

I couldn't stop laughing when I read that.

Update #3: More Seoul relay live-bloggers:

• Sakura, a Japanese blogger I presume, has great photos of the torch relay.
  

• A Swiss-German blogger, Swiss Kimchi, was live-blogging the event. Some photos, strives to maintain "Swiss neutrality" in terms of comments.
  

No logo for this Buddha

No embroidered alligators for this Buddha! A long-term resident of Borobudur, Java, sports the real thing.

I took this photo on Saturday. More here.

Olympic torch protest plans for Seoul

The torch has arrived in the South Korean capital. The South Korean torch relay will be a wake-up call to the misery and deprivations suffered by the citizens of China's closest ally. North Korean exiles are determined to block bridges and obstruct the relay. South Korea has deployed 8,000 police officers to guard the route. AFP reports:

"We're going to try to stop the relay," said refugee Choi Hye-Jeong, who tearfully added she was tortured by North Korean authorities when Chinese officials forced her to return to her country several years ago.

"I get enraged every time I think of what they did to me. I won't let this relay happen as planned," she told Yonhap.

As the prospect of hunger or even mass starvation looms in North Korea, more people will surely try to escape into China. Will South Korea and the world continue to tolerate China's policy of repatriating these exiles? The deteriorating situation in North Korea -- prompted by global food shortages -- may well be the major event of 2008.

China has sent as many as 18,000 North Korean refugees back to North Korea over the past 15 years according one report. Reports indicate that some of these people have been executed for escaping North Korea. South Korea's past disregard for the fate of escaped North Koreans in China -- justified by the "Sunshine Policy" of the previous government in Seoul -- was a disgrace.

I am afraid the excessive security on the streets of Seoul today could cause the North Korean exiles to resort to drastic and dangerous tactics in order to be heard. There is such a thing as too much security for an event like this. Let us hope nobody gets seriously hurt.

Seoul torch relay - North Korean defectors plan protest

North Korean defectors vowed Saturday to disrupt the South Korean leg of the Olympic torch relay in protest of China's repatriation of refugees to the North where they could face execution.

The demonstration would add to the chorus of protests that has dogged the torch's global tour, focusing attention on unrest in Tibetan areas of China and Beijing's human rights record.

Han Chang Kwon, head of a coalition of groups representing North Korean defectors in South Korea, told The Associated Press that the protest at the Seoul relay on Sunday could become violent. He did not elaborate.

The flame was set to arrive in Seoul early Sunday from Japan and head to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on Monday.

Han said the defectors in South Korea were "boiling with anger" because some who escaped to China from the North had been repatriated. . . .

"While trying to improve its image with the Olympics, it (China) keeps sending defectors to the North knowing they will be executed or sent to political prisons," Han said.

A South Korean aid group, Good Friends, claimed last month that the North executed 15 people in February for attempting to flee or helping others escape the country, and the Amnesty International urged Pyongyang to halt such summary executions.*

On Thursday a freighter loaded with arms destined for Zimbabwe's dictator was turned around. Tibet is only a fraction of the story with regards to China's unsavory policies concerning the welfare and rights of non-Chinese.

In the case of North Korea, the country is facing the prospect of another famine. Will the world party it up in Beijing in August, if just a few hundred kilometers away, North Koreans face starvation? The turn of events concerning China's closest ally could yet amount to the real deal-breaker concerning the Beijing Olympics.
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* Associated Press

Canberra torch relay

The Sydney Morning Herald reports (hat-tip Jeg*):

Pro-Tibet protesters have reported being heavied by groups of Chinese students who were bussed to Canberra in their thousands to support this morning's Olympic torch relay in Canberra.

. . . . pro-Tibet protester, Marion Vecourcay, said she felt frightened and threatened by the Chinese demonstrators.

Another frightened relay protester? Sounds familiar. See my previous post concerning the relay in Malaysia.

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* Jeg has been blogging the the torch relays on her blog.

Kuala Lumpur torch relay

In Thailand and Jakarta, I learned that the 2008 torch relay is not mainly an event about the Olympics, the Olympic spirit, universal brotherhood, or the athletes of the various countries which the torch visits. Rather, the 2008 Olympic torch relay is mostly about the Games' host country, China.

It appears that one protester, Hafiz Noor Shams, learned the same lesson, live-blogging the torch relay in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.* Shams writes:

I just got back from the whole event and it was a scary experience. . . . I brought with me a yellow banner with the word “LIBERTY” on it.

After awhile walking, I was harassed by volunteers from PRC at the Dataran Merdeka and the police did nothing to help me. About 20 thugs from the so-called volunteers youth from PRC surrounded me while flying their red flags-as if trying to cover up their action-and pushing me around. While doing so, they told me not to politicize the Olympics but I told them back that the PRC politicized the Olympics back in the 40s up to the 70s. And the PRC is politicizing the Olympics even right now. Just look at the shirt they were wearing! That made them upset.

The blogger continues:

Things calmed down until the relay started. I shouted FREE TIBET but was again harassed. This time one person from PRC grabbed me from behind. Being defensive, I pushed him back and shouting “TOLONG” to two police officers nearby. When the police came over but the PRC guy just walked off into the crowd. After some explanation, the police however advised me to let it go. It seems, the police feared these thugs.

After the whole hoo-ha, I noticed that some thugs were stalking me. So, I stayed close to several police officers, being friendly with them in hope those stalkers would back off. It took some time before the thugs relented.

I was slightly shaken but hey, it strengthens my belief in liberty. I’ve been so far only simulating liberty in my head but this is it. Coercion was used upon me and that is a cause for greater stress in liberty.

These thugs are not used to free speech and they tried to impose their un-free political culture back in PRC on others. To them, I say, to hell with you. And if this is how you treat differences in opinion, I would be honored to have been “brainwashed” by the “western media”.

It seems Shams' was later disingenuously profiled in The Star. Not only are Malaysian cops doing Beijing's dirty work, so are institutions of Malaysia's not-very-free press.
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* KL4freetibet has the blogger's photos here and a description of the event here. The blogger, Hafiz Noor Shams, has another post at another website on the KL rally which includes more photos.

Live-blogging the Jakarta torch relay

The Jakarta event was not a normal torch relay, it was an invitation-only spectacle for friends of China in Indonesia. It was held in the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium which holds 100,000 people. According the the Jakarta Post, only five thousand received invitations to attend today's event, including 1,000 students from China resident in Jakarta.

I was present when some local Jakarta students showed up. They were from the outskirts of Jakarta. Waking up before dawn, they traveled a long way to come and watch the torch relay. But these students were not welcome as the picture and the video shows. Their teachers had already gone home, but they continued to plead with the guards to let them in to see the torch relay. But it was to no avail.





Security was tight for the relay. "There are many security services here," said a new media journalist I spoke with. "I see Shabara, Intelligence, K9, Brimobs, and Lantas. Inspector General Adung Firman is even here." Just as he was saying this, the army showed up. Dozens of orange berets troops piled out of three trucks.

The photo at left shows one of the torch bearers, Toufik Hidayat. Hidayat is Indonesia's hope for a gold medal in badminton. His exit from the stadium generated a lot of interest.

See also CNN.

Bangkok torch protests

Update: I have revised -- extended -- the write-up to my "live-blogging post" of the Bangkok torch. I had posted some preliminary remarks late Saturday night. See here for the complete torch relay story which now includes photos and videos.

For various perspectives on the relay protest, see this post by Bangkok Pundit. He surveys some Thai blogs and news media reports.


Photo: Jotman

Fact-checking China's netizens: an expose of that anti-CNN website

The original centerpiece of the so-called Chinese netizens' campaign against the Western media was the website anti-cnn.com. I have been severely critical of the movement because I believe the claims made by the group far exceeded their evidence. It's a pattern which has been repeated in the Chinese blogosophere where one unsubstantiated claim after another is now being leveled against individuals, culminating in vicious personal attacks against Grace Wang, foreign journalists, and a Chinese newspaper editor. Chinese netizen attacks have recently been launched against France and its largest retailer.

Now, a German student has decided to fact-check the evidence supplied by the anti-CNN bloggers; the material that fueled accusations that first ignited the Chinese netizens. It seems not only -- as I have long maintained -- was their evidence inconclusive, the German student shows they misrepresented some facts. He examines anti-CNN's clippings from Der Spiegel and CNN and shows them to have been "cropped" and even "mislabeled." Sound familiar? His interesting expose of the anti-CNN group is a website called I Love China.
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See also this post.

My videos of the Olympic torch relay in Bangkok

Videos have been moved. Now they are part of my main post about the torch relay. See here.

Live blogging the Olympic torch relay in Bangkok, Thailand

On Saturday I attempted to document the torch relay in Bangkok, covering most of the 10 km route on foot. I got pushed around a lot. It was hot day, and taking good pictures often required sprinting ahead of the relay.

In the first photo, the torch passes Bangkok's Grand Palace. I was told that many of the runners were CEOs of various Thai companies. Some of these guys were not the fastest runners -- and that was OK with me!


The next photo -- on the left --depicts two Chinese men holding a sign that reads "One World One Dream." They were part of a group of about 100 Chinese marching in support of the relay.

The marchers chanted "Welcome to Beijing! Welcome to China!" But when one man shouted these lines into a megaphone it came across not as an invitation, but a command. Here is a video I shot of the Chinese march:




I could not help but feel a bit sad watching this patriotic march -- sad for these enthusiastic people. It is such a shame that China's government has so mishandled the situation in Tibet that their long-awaited Olympics is now so tainted that even shouts of "welcome" sound awkward to the ears. Of course, this is probably not how the Chinese people in the march see things.

However, inspecting this band of Chinese patriots reminded me of an article by Hong Kong scholar Willy Lam.* Lam recently wrote that China's top leadership may eventually have to pay for their mismanagement of the Tibet situation and the unrest. The Chinese want to welcome the world to their games. They are proud of their country. But their leaders have managed to offend the sensibilities of the world. When I think about it this way, it seems to me as if the leadership of China has lost face. The Chinese may not be shouting this out loud today -- or even thinking this way yet, but I suspect the leadership will not escape culpability forever.


Security issues

The next two photos at right show security for the torch relay.

Above one of the royal arches flies the helicopter which followed the torch. It flew quite low for the first two kilometers.


The next photo shows the men in blue who run with the torch. In attempt to take the photos you are now looking at, I got pushed away about a dozen times.

The experience of taking photos at times felt like being in a football game (not the US kind) where your opponents nudge you. At other times, getting a good shot of the relay risked a rugby check.

Actually, the Chinese torch runners push me rather politely. More the gentlemen in Thailand, their new game was football.

By contrast, it was one or two Thai policeman who really were much too aggressive. They pushed me as if the relay was a game of American football or a rugby match. (I'm wondering if there isn't a skill to pushing people around nicely. Following incidents reported in London and Paris, the Chinese torch guards may well be getting more skillful at their game. In fact, I would argue that countries holding future relays should not be too quick to insist on using their own inexperienced torch guards in place of the Chinese guards. Australia, for example, plans to use only its own police to guard the torch -- that might not be such a good idea.) At the end of the relay I shook hands with some torch guards. After all, it's what one does at the end of a football match!

This video shows what running along with the torch feels like. It begins with a few scenes taken at the start of the relay -- some Chinese kids sing their national anthem for two seconds. Clips of a couple torch runners follow. The video is a bit shaky, but I think it conveys the pace, the intensity, of the relay. Things moved fast:

Almost worse than getting pushed by the rugby playing Thai cops were police motorcycle escorts. There were too many and mainly presented a hazard, and helped make the air unclean for all the runners.

I don't think police motorcycles should be part of a torch relay. In my opinion, they are not necessary for security but present a hazard.





Left side photo shows the "official" press cameramen who got carried in a truck positioned directly in front of the runner. The organizers chose an old dirty exhaust emitting vehicle for this purpose (to give the torch runner a taste of what the air will be like in Beijing?)


A photo on the right shows the torch runner passing Democracy Monument (he is the man in white). Speaking of democracy, Thailand did not feel like such a free country this week. The government issued draconian warnings that probably dissuaded many people -- both Thais and foreigners -- from exercising their right to protest.

The next photo (left) shows a passing- of-the-flame.











The second on the left shows a group of Chinese Olympics supporters. This group of supporters faces Democracy Monument across the street. I spoke to a couple who said they worked for a Chinese company in Bangkok. Most everywhere I looked you saw Chinese flags. A few Thai flags, but not as many as one might expect. I took about 400 photos as I traversed most of the 10 kilometer relay course -- and I saw a lot of red flags. A Thai friend who inspected my new photo collection advised:

Best you choose some photos to post that prove the relay took place in Thailand (not somewhere in China).

Demonstrators shown in the photos at right were the only group of protesters I encountered along the route.

At this point in the relay, I had just stepped off the street, where I had been photographing the procession.

It was extremely hot. The shade of the trees cooled me down, but in having escaped the sun, I found myself trapped behind a wall of people facing the fence. And the group lining the road here included many of the relay protesters. I watched them wave their signs and shout as the torch passed before them.

According to later newspaper reports, over at the UN Building just up the road, police kept the relay protesters away from a group of relay supporters.

For the duration of the relay, I would not see another protester.








Royalty

The photo on the left shows HRH Princess Siridhorn. She watched the torch relay from the grounds of the Chitralada Palace.


















Another photo at left shows a large crowd. Within the crowd stands a Thai elephant ridden by a child. To the upper left of the photo the runner carries the torch. The torch approaches the final few legs of the relay.







Torch run hits a snag

The series of three photos on the right side of the page tell the story of what happened when they couldn't relight the Olympic torch.


First, three Chinese torch guards in blue struggle to light the torch, but to no avail.










Second, the torch runner stands hapless, his flame unlit.

















Third, the torch runner decides to make the most of the situation, allowing girls to have their photo taken with him.













The final stretch

The final photo shows one of the last relay runners. The building in the background is the Throne Hall.

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* Willy Lam, "Hope for a better Tibet policy" Far East Economic Review, April 2008

Tesco sues Thai journalist - 3rd Thai citizen sued in one month

It appears Britain's Tesco wants to teach Thais to keep their mouths shut -- never to criticize the big-box storesthat may be threatening the livelihoods of small retailers -- or face lawsuits. The British-based multinational has launched a lawsuit against a third Thai in one month! (I blogged about the previous two lawsuits here.) The Guardian newspaper -- which is also being sued by Tesco -- reports:

Tesco in Thailand is suing a second columnist from a Bangkok business newspaper for £1.6m in libel damages.

The global retailer, trading as Tesco Lotus, claims the business gossip writer for Bangkok Business News damaged the company's reputation when she said the company did not "love" Thailand.

The offending article in Nongnart Harnvilai's tongue-in-cheek "Buzz" column was part of a collection of short stories on page 28 of the paper, and ran to just a few sentences.

The article continues:

Campaigners for free speech said the latest writ underscored Tesco Lotus's determination to stamp out criticism of its rapid expansion, which has been hotly debated for nearly a decade.

"Obviously Tesco Lotus is on the warpath," said Roby Alampay, of the South-east Asian Press Alliance (Seapa). "It's out to silence not only criticism, but seems to want to stop anyone saying anything about the company. We find that very ominous."

A committee of the Thai Journalists Association concerned with the potential erosion of press freedom is due to meet the columnists today to discuss ways to combat Tesco Lotus's tactics. Next week, Thailand's Human Rights Commission is set to address the company's multiple libel writs and the tactic of going after individuals rather than the organisations they represent.

Both Jit, 56, and Kamol, 58, had criticised Tesco Lotus's "aggressive" expansion in Thailand, saying it had come at the expense of small retailers who could not compete with company's 370 superstores and hypermarkets across the country. They also said the company had sought to minimise its Thai tax liabilities.

Nongnart, 45, joined the fray when she remarked on Tesco Lotus's plans to open a further 130 outlets, saying Thai competitors were in for a tough time. "Ha, Tesco Lotus doesn't love Thais," was her sign off. In the libel writ Tesco Lotus claimed the article had hurt its image and demanded £1.6m to repair the damage.

"It was supposed to be funny," said Duangkamol Chotana, the Bangkok Business News editor. "It's not even real criticism. I can't understand how Tesco Lotus feels damaged by this. I'm surprised by their action because they should understand and respect media freedom."

Bangkok Business News has said it will fight the actions and is backing both its columnists even though they - rather than it - were named in the writs.

Notice that Tesco choses not to sue a Thai company, but an individual journalist. This tactic suggests to me that the company is not serious about claiming damages -- how much money does a Thai journalist earn? -- but merely wants to intimidate Thai journalists.

What does this mean for freedom of the press in Thailand? For Thai peoples' rights to decide for themselves what kinds of neighborhoods they want to live in? For the rights of locally owned businesses? Thailand is not a level playing field, in which corporations and individuals have equal access to justice. The legal system here is not "fair" as in the West (i.e. the UK where Tesco is based). I think Tesco is taking advantage of an uneven playing field. To put their big box stores wherever they want them to go -- regardless of what Thais citizens want.

At a minimum, a company that "loves" Thailand would likely show respect for the institutions of Thai civil society. When a big company fires off lawsuits against journalists, this undermines the ability of the press to do its job. Thailand may pay a high price for Tesco's decision target journalists with lawsuits, especially if Tesco's example encourages other firms to follow its lead.

Update: Concerning the first of the three recent lawsuits by Tesco against Thai people, see Bangkok Pundit's post, "McLibel"

Olympic torch relay route map and schedule

Maps of the torch relay route for 2008 Beijing Olympics.

• First map Torchrelay via Lenovo

• Second map of East Asia/China route from the BBC

• Interactive world map also available

• Wikipedia has the schedule for the extensive China segment. And so does the official site of the torch relay (here).
  

Asian torch relay schedule (excluding China)
April 18 - Bangkok
April 21 - Kuala Lumpur
April 22 - Jakarta
April 24 - Canberra
April 26 - Nagano
April 27 - Seoul
April 28 - Pyongyang
April 29 - Ho Chi Minh City
April 30 - Taipei
May 2 - Hong Kong
May 3 - Macau

Bangkok Olympic torch relay

I plan to live-blog the event in Bangkok Saturday -- so be sure to check back for the story and photos in about 24 hours.

In the meantime, the following blogs are a good source of information about the event:

Bangkok Pundit: Investigates the rumor that foreigners who protest the torch relay will face deportation (it's exaggerated). He also has info about a panel discussion on the Olympics to be held in Bangkok.

No torch in Tibet: This Thailand blogger has a good but unofficial map of the relay route and details about how to join the torch relay demonstration.

Adam's Gekko: Has written a most amusing account of the arrival of the torch last night in Bangkok. Adam has been closely following the torch relay protests.

Information about the Bangkok torch relay:
When: 3:00 PM Saturday April 19.
Where: The relay starts at Chinese Gate in China Town and runs parallel to the river -- along Yaowarat and Charoenkrung Roads, up Charoenkrung road (which runs alongside the grounds of the Grand Palace and Sanamluang field); then past Democracy Monument on Ratchadamneon Krang Road; up Ratchadamneon Nok Road, culminating in a circle of the Royal Palace to end at King Rama IV Equestrian Monument.

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Photo: from Notorch. Big hat-tip goes to BP.

Olympic torch relay in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

After its Bangkok tour, the Olympic torch will travel to the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. The Olympic torch relay in Malaysia will take place on April 21 and is scheduled to start at 14:00. It will end at the Petronas Twin Towers (the plan is to carry it up one of the towers). KL4FreeTibet blogger is tracking information regarding the torch rely in KL.

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hat-tip: Adam's Gekko who is blogging Tibet and the torch relays.
Photo: torchrelay

The live-blogger of Tibet responds to allegations photo and video depict fake rioters

The Dalai Lama has called for an international inquiry into the unrest that swept Tibet on March 14, 2008. He has asserted that Chinese security agents dressed as Tibetan monks. Now, in response to Jotman inquiries, the live-blogger of Lhasa shines new light on the controversial riots.

In my previous post concerning this controversy, I blogged: "Kadfly was one of a handful of Western witnesses to the protests in Lhasa. He was its only live-blogger." Further, I observed:

Anti-PRC . . . suggest that apparent acts of violence in Lhasa had been faked by Chinese government agents or soldiers guised as Tibetans.

. . . Today, 1 photo and 1 video that had originally been posted by blogger Kadfly on March 14 are central to two claims -- made by anti-PRC groups -- that roting in Lhasa was "staged" by China.

Those who claim rioting in Lhasa was staged may not be aware of the fact that it was Kadfly who first posted the evidence. . . .

In that post I proceeded to examine evidence supplied by people claiming the riots had been staged. In conclusion, I suggested that "Kadfly might describe for us the situation -- as he remembers events unfolding." Kadfly has graciously posted a response to my request on his blog. In his detailed post, Kadfly provides us with valuable context behind his rare photos and Michael's video of the attack on a motorcycle. Kadfly's new insights help us to better understand what really happened on the most historic day -- so far -- of 2008.

Below, within a copy of the original post, I have pasted Kadfly's responses concerning relevant sections (in red). Any new comments by me are in italics.

------ ORIGINAL POST WITH KADFLY'S RESPONSES ------

Investigating allegations that Tibet riots had been staged

Were the riots in Lhasa staged by Chinese soldiers?

. . . On March 19 Kadfly reflected on the situation in Tibet, blogging from Kathmandu:

Tibet, as I said above, is a complex issue: as I have seen in these protests, it is not simply a matter of the big, bad Chinese government versus the Tibetan underdogs, which is unfortunately how the media has tried to shape this issue. Why we (those in the 'newsroom' in the hotel on the 14th and 15th) decided to upload the video of the motorcyclist being attacked is because we had seen from the news that this was exactly what was not being reported. We suspected this might be the case from the very start when our photos began to be picked up by the media: my photo of the Chinese soldiers in the shield formation and the Tibetan man burning the Chinese flag might be very powerful, but do they really tell the story of what happened that day any better than a bus of civilians being stoned and a man lying on the pavement after having been brutally attacked? No, but these other photos would have taken too much effort to explain to an audience that has become used to the narrative of a bad China and a good Tibet. So yeah, there was never a hidden agenda. I don't think anyone in that room had particularly strong feelings on the issue: all we wanted to do was get the truth out, no matter how complex and how hard it was for people to swallow.

In the portions of the text which I highlighted above, Kadfly refers to two reports -- a video and a photograph of a burning flag -- that anti-PRC groups now cite as evidence of a Chinese plot to fake the rioting. Let's examine these claims and take a look at the evidence.

EXHIBIT A: The Biker Video

First, the video of the biker. For several days, this video was the only visual evidence available -- at least to me -- that the protests may have involved brutal attacks by Tibetans against Han Chinese in Lhasa. On Friday March 14 Kadfly had blogged:

I want to make one thing clear because all of the major news outlets are ignoring a very important fact. Yes, the Chinese government bears a huge amount of blame for this situation. But the protests yesterday were NOT peaceful. The original protests from the past few days may have been, but all of the eyewitnesses in this room agree the protesters yesterday went from attacking Chinese police to attacking innocent people very, very quickly. They appeared to target Muslim and Han Chinese individuals and businesses first but many Tibetans were also caught in the crossfire.

This video from Michael from Italy is an excellent example.

Kadfly had made a bold and -- at the time -- controversial assertion. It's a post that has since been cited by the Chinese group attacking CNN (see above); meaning Kadfly now figures prominently in Chinese attacks on the Western media. This article in China Daily concerning media bias in the West quotes Kadfly. Judging by a recent New York Times report, this campaign may be considered integral to the recent propaganda initiative of the Beijing government.

Kadfly's observations have since been collaborated by various tourists, the journalist for the Economist magazine, and others. But that was by no means the case when Kadfly posted his opinion. For several days, the outside world was in the dark about what was really going on inside Tibet. Upon first eading Kadfly's post, I thought it a pity that Kadfly had not provided further elaboration as to the specifics of what "the eyewitnesses in this room" had seen -- details.

Kadfly would later write (see above for the context):

. . . these other photos would have taken too much effort to explain to an audience that has become used to the narrative of a bad China and a good Tibet.

I was sorry to read that Kadfly felt this way -- I say this as a blogger who was simply trying to make sense of the Tibet situation at the time. When it came to Kadfly's assertion about ethnic violence, apart from the motorcycle video, he offered no other descriptions of actual attacks on Han Chinese or Muslims. This omission made it difficult for critically-minded overseas readers to fully accept his opinion about what was happening -- especially at a time when there were no reliable collaborating sources.

Kadfly's response:

My blog post that next morning was extremely short not because I personally felt it would take too much effort to explain what I had seen, but because I had to leave the hotel where we had stayed the night of the 14th immediately (the police were literally waiting outside). Uploading the video was the last thing I was able to do before I lost the internet for a number of days after I was escorted back to my own hostel. This quote: "these other photos would have taken too much effort to explain to an audience that has become used to the narrative of a bad China and a good Tibet" is why I believe major news outlets did not pick up my other pictures or report on the violence of the rioters, not why I myself personally did not explain it earlier.

However, Kadfly's blogging opened our eyes, and his photographs are remarkable. Although Kadfly did us a great service by blogging the unrest in Tibet, contrary to what some sources in the Chinese blogosphere now claim, Kadfly's blog does not constitute evidence that Western news organizations lied about what happened in Tibet.

Kadfly's response:

I wouldn't say I believe Western news organizations actively lied about what happened in Tibet. I will stick with the weaker position that they certainly did not actively try to report all parts of the story. That the rioters were violent was not well reported in the initial hours (and to an extent, still isn't): there was much more emphasis on the Chinese crackdown when to our knowledge, they did not even yet have basic control of large parts of the city. No matter what, I think the evidence against the Western media isn't good: they have definitely cropped pictures that have given the protests a more peaceful feel (I'm thinking of the infamous trucks photo) and they have definitely used pictures of Nepalese riot police responding with force against Tibetans in stories about what was happening in Tibet. Sure, the Chinese news agencies might be doing the very same (if not worse), but as I have said to Blogdai, I and others rightfully hold the Western news media to a higher standard.

What about the video Kadfly supplied? In the video someone bashes a helmet-wearing motorcycle driver in the head with rocks. Kadfly had written:

This motorcyclist, who I assume the protesters identified as Han Chinese, was simply riding up Beijing Street when the video took place. He was not army, not police, not doing anything other than riding his motorcycle.

I watched the video myself, but this question nagged me: How had the attackers identified the man as Chinese? What was happening in Tibet? On the basis of this one video, and Kadfly's otherwise unsupported opinion, I could not decide. Neither could any other responsible member of the media.

Who was the motorcycle rider? Last week, someone representing the pro-Tibetan group "No Olympics" sent me a YouTube expose concerning the video of the motorcycle rider. The the expose video asserts that the man in the video was not easily identifiable as Han Chinese; that he did not seem to have been hurt (he was wearing a helmet, and no rocks appeared to have been aimed at his body); that people in Tibet are seldom seen wearing helmets; that large stones were conveniently available on pavement beside the bike; and that the driver-victim appears unafraid of his attackers (at the end of the video he walks away). Here is the video expose:



I don't think this expose video settles the question. We need to look into the circumstances surrounding the filming of the video. The video warrants professional analysis. And we need to hear what the Italian named Michael has to say.

Kadfly's response:

Third, with regards to the video:

I can't speak for Michael, but I was also there when the video was filmed (I was on the street). The man initially rode up Beijing Donglu slowly, with apparently no idea of what was happening. When an initial stone was thrown at him, he slowed his bike down and stared behind him quite naturally, probably wondering why anyone would throw a rock at him. That is when he realized the entire street was trying to peg him, and he sped up for a few seconds before coming to a complete stop and pleaded with the crowd on the north side of the street to stop attacking him. This is when the other man rushes up to him and the video begins.

Afterwards when we were in the hotel we also wondered how the crowd was able to identify this man as Chinese. Some believed that the crowd were basically attacking anything that drove past but I remember seeing a truck drive through Beijing Street that no one stoned and people actually waved at, so in my opinion the crowd was able to tell between friend and foe somehow. I think it is very possible the man-with-the-knife is an undercover police officer but I am less sure about the motorcyclist attack being staged (unless the main attackers were undercover police officers just attacking an innocent bystander to get the crowd riled up). The attack was vicious and brutal, and very similar to the attack that left the man in the suit bleeding on the ground a few minutes later (there's a picture of him from "Willie" in the original 'Lhasa Burning' post). It seemed like everyone on the street were throwing stones at the motorcyclist, so unless they all were Chinese agents I have trouble believing it was staged (though only a few people took part in the more vicious hand-to-hand assault). I suspect maybe the way he was dressed or the type of bike he was riding tipped the crowd off to his identity, or the fact he had a helmet, when very few Tibetans use one according to the YouTube expose on Jotman's post. Or maybe the crowd really were just attacking everyone and everything and somehow the truck had managed to communicate it was on their side, or they had been throwing stones at it and I just didn't see this. Anyways, after he escaped the attack apparently the man went back to retrieve his bike but it was taken from him again and one of the bigger fires was then started using it ("Willie" witnessed this, not me).

EXHIBIT B: The man burning the Chinese flag

The second claim that some rioting in Lhasa was staged is presented by the fervently anti-PRC Epoch Times. The claim is based on what Kadfly calls his "very powerful" photo of "the Tibetan man burning the Chinese flag."

Kadfly has since removed this particular photo from his website. Why? He said he would be removing some photos so that the Tibetans pictured in the photos could not later be identified. On 19 March he blogged:

First, as Joakim and others have pointed out, a lot of the photos from the 'Lhasa Burning' post show people's faces and may lead to their arrest. As such, I will be taking these particular photos down - if you think other photos should be taken down for similar reasons please make a comment so that I know about it.

I will admit that I struggled with this decision for a little while: many of those shown in the photos were acting little better than violent thugs when the pictures were taken (e.g. in the flag burning photo one of those shown began throwing rocks at others in the hotel moments after I took the picture) so I'm unsure if they actually deserve any protection from the authorities. That said, I will keep those particular photos off my blog for now.

On March 16, I cut, saved, and posted this particular photo -- the one that has been called into question by the Epoch Times -- to illustrate the post at Jotman.com entitled "Kadfly's live-blogging of the Tibet crisis." To the left is the photo which was posted on Kadfly's blog, but which Kadfly has since removed (I modified the brightness of Kadfly's photo for effect).

Now, according to a March 29 article published in the Epoch Times, the photo at right

. . . is a copy of the picture of the same scene in Lhasa but with the man with the knife now missing, which was distributed after the man's identity was revealed at a rally in Darmasala.

The identity of the man with the knife is said to be that of a Chinese soldier. Not mentioned in the Epoch Times article is a more recent development: at a news conference on March 29, none other than the Dalai Lama appears to refer to the sword-wielding man in the photo; Dalai Lama also said troops disguised as monks had incited the violence. According to a recent news report:

In his most serious allegation against Beijing since unrest gripped Lhasa and other places this month, the Dalai Lama said that China had disguised its troops as monks to give the impression that Tibetans were instigating the riots.

"In one picture we see a (monk) holding a sword, but it is not a traditional Tibetan sword. We know that a few hundred soldiers have been dressed like monks," said the Dalai Lama, who has been living in India since fleeing his homeland in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

Is the Dalai Lama referring to the same sword photo mentioned in the Epoch Times article? If so, the photograph has been is elevated to a level of international controversy, with the China issuing an official denial of the allegation.

Evidence is accumulating that the Chinese regime orchestrated violence in Lhasa in order to discredit the peaceful protests of Buddhist monks.

According to the Dalai Lama's Chinese translator, Ngawang Nyendra, a witness reported that a Chinese policeman in Lhasa disguised himself as a Tibetan and joined the protesters holding a knife in his hand. This witness also recognized the man from BBC news footage and news photos provided by China.** (see Update)

A Chinese woman from Thailand (who prefers that her name not be used) was studying in Lhasa when the protests broke out in March. As one of her friends is a policeman, she visited him at the local police station quite often and got to know other policemen there.

After the protests on March 14, she and other foreigners were sent to the police station where she saw a man with a knife in his hand walking in with some arrested Tibetans. The man later took off the Tibetan-style clothes and put on a police uniform.

This woman was sent out of Lhasa with other foreigners the next day. When she arrived in India via Nepal, she recognized the policeman she had seen in Tibetan garb from BBC TV news and photos that the Chinese embassy had provided to the media.

The Epoch Times article continues:

On Xinhua and other Chinese -language Web sites friendly to the regime, after the rally at which the witness spoke, the policeman in disguise had disappeared from photos taken at the same scene in which he had previously been visible. Recently, the original man-with-the-knife photo has returned to these Web sites.

Ngawang Nyendra said, "This photo with this man in it was sent by the Chinese embassy to BBC and Radio Free Asia. The other photo was sent out later. They are exactly the same except the man has disappeared from the second photo.

"From the TV news footage, you can see this man attempting to stab other people with a knife. But in later shots you can't find this person any more. They were acting. After people raised questions about these shots, this footage never appeared on TV again."

Kadfly said he took photo in question. So he must have seen this scene unfold. We need to ask Kadfly to provide us with context behind the photo -- his input here could be invaluable.

The article also suggests that the China may have a history of staging riots in Tibet.

Kadfly's response:

Second, with regards to the picture of the flag burning:

Check out this post on my blog for a few more pictures of the mystery man. I can't really add much more than that: he didn't particularly stand out when I was taking the photos. In fact, I didn't even know there was a man wielding a huge knife in the flag burning picture until I left Tibet. It looks like he shows up as the monk points out the Chinese flag to the crowd which had previously left the restaurant/shop alone. A few guys scramble up to grab the flag while others assault the building. Then the flag is brought to the fire in the middle of the street. Moments after that apparently the man in the brown jacket starts stoning the hotel (though I didn't witness this part) and a few minutes after this we were escorted by hotel management to a safer part of the hotel (meaning a part that could no longer see anything). So yes, the man is definitely there. But no, I can't say anything further about his identity.

Final Thoughts

Although the Epoch Times article gave me a lot to think about, neither its account nor the "expose" of the motorcycle rider video had me convinced the rioting was staged. I have continued to remind myself that suspicious things sometimes have innocuous explanations -- as we saw with regards to the photograph of the soldiers carrying monk robes. But these other allegations have raised the nagging doubts to a level of urgency. And the more recent statement by the Dalai Lama convinces me that we must get to the bottom of this deepening mystery.

A motorcyclist wearing a helmet gets attacked and then appears to stick around: is this evidence of a staged attack? I would like to hear what "Michael from Italy" has to say about it. What about the man holding the sword? Kadfly might describe for us the situation -- as he remembers events unfolding -- when he took the photo. Most importantly -- concerning the fact that a swordsman disappears and reappears in the photograph -- we need to examine allegations of photo-doctoring by the PRC, first brought to light by the Epoch Times. The more recent allegations brought to the attention of the world by the Dalai Lama also merit further examination.

Questions have been raised about the rioters of Lhasa. The evidence presented here demands further inquiry.

Kadfly responds:

Lastly, with regards to the bigger issue of whether or not the riots were staged:

I don't know, but as with most things, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle (I usually stick with this position, hence the "radical moderate"). We all know Beijing loves to lie, but Dharamsala has definitely engaged in the propaganda game as well. Yes, I wouldn't doubt that there were Chinese agents undercover during the riots who actively fueled the unrest, but at the end of the day, I and many others saw hundreds of people engage in violence and I don't think for a second that all of them were on the PLA payroll.

Sincerely,
K

Kadfly was recently interviewed by blogger Blogdai here.
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* Click here for PART I: CASE CLOSED
Update 1 (April 4, 2008): I just came across a newspaper article in the Christian Science Monitor by a reporter who spoke with Kadfly, someone named Paul, and a European (Michael the Italian?) at the time of the unrest.
** Update #2: ESWN blogger examines some of the evidence presented in the above post. He says, effectively, that the Epoch Times report is untrue because there is no record of the TV footage mentioned by the Dalai Lama's translator on YouTube: "If there was TV news footage, it would have been posted on YouTube or some other video-sharing site."
Update 3: Kadfly has posted some new photos and comments on the photo in question. "The "man-with-the-knife" is most definitely in the original" he writes.
Update 4 (April 18): Kadfly, now blogging from India, has just posted a detailed and extremely informative reply to questions raised in this post on his blog.

Grace Wang attacked by Chinese netizens

Grace Wang is a Chinese student at a top American university* who earnestly tried to mediate between pro-Tibet and Chinese protesters during a campus rally. For her efforts at peacemaking, she has been vilified by Chinese netizens. Money quote:

Salted with ugly rumors and manipulated photographs, the story of the young woman who was said to have taken sides with Tibet spread through China’s most popular Web sites, at each stop generating hundreds or thousands of raging, derogatory posts, some even suggesting that Ms. Wang — a slight, rosy 20-year-old — be burned in oil. Someone posted a photo of what was purported to be a bucket of feces emptied on the doorstep of her parents, who had gone into hiding.

“If you return to China, your dead corpse will be chopped into 10,000 pieces,” one person wrote in an e-mail message to Ms. Wang. “Call the human flesh search engines!” another threatened, using an Internet phrase that implies physical, as opposed to virtual, action.

Don't say nobody saw this coming. What else was to be expected from a netizens' movement that has gave so little heed to the quality of the evidence mounted in support of its previous attacks?

The question is critical. It explains why I went to some length to systematically investigate the scanty evidence behind the claims of the "anti-CNN" Chinese netizens' movement. Western news organizations may have seemed deserving objects of scorn to many observers, but not to Jotman. In my opinion, the refusal of the Chinese netizens to scrutinize their own best "evidence" against the Western media demonstrated a worrisome lack of critical rigor. That the first "victims" of the netizens campaign were large impersonal news organizations like CNN was entirely beside the point. The netizens' slipshod matching of dubious evidence with the strongest of claims troubled me greatly; I saw the practice as frightening in its own right; to me it did not matter one iota that the netizens' target appeared "deserving" of scorn for any number of other reasons.

It should come as no surprise that some Chinese netizens have acted upon the entirely unsubstantiated claims made against young Grace Wang and her family. Now anyone can see that the method of early attacks by netizens against the Western media was a harbinger of things more malicious and patently wicked.

One lingering mystery is why China's Internet censors have chosen to tolerate attacks against Grace Wang and others. Another question concerns the identity of some of China's more offensive netizens.
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*Duke University
Update: John Kennedy at Global Voices has translated examples of some Chinese netizens' opinions concerning Grace Wang.

Food crisis, biofuel, and Barack Obama

Across the developing world -- from Haiti to the Philippines to Egypt -- food shortages are at hand. There have been protests and riots. North Korea may face famine. Meanwhile, in the USA conventional wisdom holds that a candidate with personal connection to countries in the developing world -- Kenya and Indonesia -- is poised to win the Democratic Party nomination for the US presidency. It comes as no small irony that this presidential hopeful actually bears some personal responsibility for the food crisis which threatens countries of the developing world.

The US has long been the "breadbasket of the world." Whenever there was a crop failure in the old Soviet Union, or Indian or Africans faced famine, the US farmer was there. But today, a significant portion of America's farmland -- some of the most fertile soil on earth -- is devoted to growing corn for energy purposes. Moreover, the corn-based ethanol US farms produce is non-economical. The US government (read: the American taxpayer) subsidizes giant corporations to plant corn for ethanol. The system is ridiculously inefficient, but the agriculture lobby has bought some powerful friends in the US Congress.

Today no political ally of the US ethanol industry is more prominent -- according to a Harper's magazine article by Ken Silverstein -- than one 2008 presidential hopeful. Silverstein describes attending a speech back in 2006 given by Barack Obama to one thousand progressive activists. It was a speech full of the now familiar rhetorical flourishes. Yet as Silverstein noted, it was empty of substance but for one issue: "Obama had essentially marshaled his twenty minutes of undeniably moving oratory to plump for the classic pork-barrel cause of every Midwestern politician." Obama's sacred "cause" was biofuel. Silverstein writes:

. . . indeed Obama has delivered for his constituents—for social activists, but also for business groups whose demands are invariably more costly. . . . (E)thanol . . . survives only because members of Congress from farm states, whether liberal or conservative, have for decades managed to win billions of dollars in federal subsidies to underwrite its production. It is not, of course, family farmers who primarily benefit from the program but rather the agribusiness giants such as Illinois-based Aventine Renewable Energy and Archer Daniels Midland (for which ethanol accounts for just 5 percent of its sales but an estimated 23 percent of its profits). Ethanol production, as Tad Patzek of UC Berkeley’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering wrote in a report this year, is based on “the massive transfer of money from the collective pocket of the U.S. taxpayers to the transnational agricultural cartel.”

Since arriving on Capitol Hill, Obama has been as assiduous as any member of Congress in promoting ethanol.

As the specter of hunger and political instability stalks the developing world, Barack Obama and the other presidential candidates should be forced to state categorically whether or not they stand behind continued subsidies to the US corn ethanol industry.

Because when families across the developing world face hunger due to high food prices, US ethanol policy is no mere taxpayer scam. From the perspective of the world's poorest people, for the US to pay its farmers to feed automobiles instead of people is simply unconscionable.

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I would urge everyone to read Time Magazine's outstanding article: The clean Energy Scam.
Check out Obama's Energy Policy at BarackObama.com

Food shortages spell end of biofuel

A few weeks ago I wrote, "biofuel is dead." So I wasn't surprised to read this:

. . . a reaction is building against policies in the United States and Europe to promote ethanol and similar fuels, with political leaders from poor countries contending that these fuels are driving up food prices and starving poor people. Biofuels are fast becoming a new flash point in global diplomacy, putting pressure on Western politicians to reconsider their policies. . . .

The American politician most prominently associated with biofuel scam is Illinois Senator Barack Obama.* And the US politician who has made the most effort to distance himself from the biofuel lobby -- not recently mind you, but back in 2000 -- is Arizona Senator John McCain.
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Update: see my post: "Food shortage, biofuel, and Barack Obama"
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NY Times.

Pico Iyer's Dalai Lama is a global citizen

Pico Iyer's biography of the Dalai Lama, The Open Road -- five years in the making -- hit the bookstores just as all hell broke lose in Tibet.

Blogging the crisis in Tibet exposed me to the political side of a figure I have admired as an eastern philosopher. With new questions for new times, I decided to reacquaint myself with the Dalai Lama. Pico Iyer, a personal friend of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama for some thirty years, seemed the ideal author to help me do this.

Iyer attempts something that sounds very Buddhist: to write about a man largely by describing his path -- the lives and places his subject has touched. Iyer said in an interview,

One of the things that I felt I was beginning to understand about Buddhism and the Dalai Lama as I progressed through the book was that the Dalai Lama himself wasn’t important, except insofar as he challenges or encourages us to be different in ourselves.

The book then, literally, is about the road. And it concerns one of Iyer's favorite topics, globalization.

A few weeks ago, before hearing about the book, I blogged: The Dalai Lama "is many things to many people in many countries from many walks of life." Iyer shows us how this statement plays out; he presents the Dalai Lama as world celebrity, contrasting this simple talker with the inquisitive and disciplined monk he has come to know. Now a septuagenarian, he is ever the eager student. And a forward looking one. Iyer asks how an incarnated lama from a lost world became the most future-oriented person he had ever met. To the Tibetan people, Dalai Lama is someone else again. We are told that even the fiercest Tibetan critic of Dalai Lama's pacifistic China policy revers him as a living god.

Indeed, we learn the Tibet exile community is split between the calm monks and the angry militants. Not only is this relevant to the current situation in Tibet, Iyer's description of this situation brought to mind my own discussions with escaped monks and guerrilla leaders on the Thai-Burma border in the wake of the Burma crisis.* The safe houses which harbored the escaped monks along the border were often run by militants. The militants' ideas about how deal with the Myanmar junta were at odds with the sacred affirmations of their house guests. Maung, the rebel leader said, "Most of the journalists just want to talk to the monk. So far you are the first one who has taken any interest in talking about our battle plans." Iyer observes that whereas the Dalai Lama gets more than the lion's share of media attention concerning Tibet, some within the Tibetans community seem to wish he was less of a global-minded citizen, and put Tibet and Tibetans first. The Tibetan militant leader Lobsang Yeshi told the author:

"China should be grateful to the Dalai Lama." His eyes began to flash, a little. . . "They call him a separatist, a splittist, but if the Dalai Lama weren't there, the Tibetan struggle would have taken a different turn." (The vehemence in his voice left me in no doubt as to what kind of turn that would have been.)

This -- as I blogged -- is how I view the Dalai Lama fitting into the present crisis: he is China's opportunity. In contrasts to short-term thinking of the more militant Tibetans (and Beijing), the Dalai Lama's strategy has been to uphold a long-term perspective that emphasizes our shared global citizenship. Pico Iyer tries to summarize that ethic:

. . . Of course we can see the Chinese as enemies, but if we do so, we are saying, in effect, that we are going to spend all our lives in the midst of enemy forces; the better solution is to change how we think of the situation, perhaps by seeing that our real enemies are our own habitual tendencies toward thinking in terms of enemies. We can always see the decisive effects of action; but what underlies action, in the way of viewpoint and motivation and feeling, is where the real change has to come.

By this way of looking at things, the apparent conflict between ardent nationalism and global citizenship is actually an illusion. And that is the real message of Pico Iyer's Dalai Lama.
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Photo: Dalai Lama via Lehigh