Beijing Wide Open

I tried to post this last Friday but had some trouble with my computer.

The torch relay in Tibet was not just a farce but a complete shame on the Chinese leadership, the IOC and everyone in the Olympic movement who allowed it to happen. During the official ceremony outside of the Potala palace the head of the Communist Party in Tibet vowed to “totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique.”

Until now I have avoided any comparisons to the Nazi Olympics in ‘36 but what happened in Lhasa was the same type of staged propaganda and an abuse of the Olympics of the worst kind.

Check out the coverage:

New York Times: Olympic Torch’s Tibet Visit Short and Political

Los Angeles Times: China parades Olympic torch in heavily guarded capital of Tibet

ABC News (Australia): Tensions simmering with Olympic torch in Tibet (includes video)

Globe and Mail (Canada): “Get on the Bus” (a blog entry about being on the official media tour)

Globe and Mail: Lhasa’s Monks all but vanish in Chinese crackdown

Here are a few reports from journalists who have been allowed into Lhasa on a closely-monitored official Chinese government tour:
Tibetan capital under lockdown for Olympic torch, Geoffrey York, Globe and Mail, June 20, 2008
Tibetan capital under tight guard for Olympic torch, Chris Buckley, Reuters, June 20, 2008
Inside Tibet’s capital, James Reynolds, BBC, June 20, 2008
Uneasy calm in Lhasa ahead of torch relay, Economic Times of India, June 20, 2008
Olympic flame on visit to isolated Tibet, Ken Teh, Associated Press, June 20, 2008

The Chinese authorities postponed the torch relay in Tibet again. It’s been hard to figure out exactly what the plan is now but it looks like the torch won’t go to Lhasa until this Saturday at the earliest.

Human Rights Watch slammed the IOC and China for the plan to take the Olympic torch to Tibet calling it “unconscionable and reckless” and saying “if Tibet is open to the torch, it must also be open to an international investigation, the media, and anyone who wishes to know what actually happened in March.”

The torch did go into East Turkestan (Xinjiang) today. East Turkestan is another occupied territory of China where the Chinese government is brutally oppressing eight million muslim Uighur people under the guise of “fighting terrorism.” There, knowing that the local people resent Beijing’s rule and do not consider themselves Chinese, the authorities just straight up told the people not to come out and watch the torch pass. Instead they recommended that everyone ” watches on the television from home.”

***To understand why this nun’s photo is here please read to the end of this post.

The Chinese authorities took the Olympic torch into Tibet today. It was paraded through a town in Gyalthang, an Eastern Tibetan area of Kham now administered under China’s Yunnan province. According to a Reuters article, “Olympic torch arrives in Tibetan areas amid tight security,” local residents said thousands of troops were deployed in the area and monks at one monastery were not allowed to go out:

“Security around the flame was extremely tight, hinting at how nervous the authorities are with reports of unrest and arrests continuing in Tibetan parts of China three months after anti-Beijing demonstrations turned violent in Lhasa, prompting the government to flood troops into the region.

At a monastery on the outskirts of town, some Buddhist monks said they had been forbidden from leaving during the torch run, while others were made to attend a sutra reading session that lasted from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m. — right when the torch was passing.” » Read the rest of this entry «