Beijing Wide Open

Question: Did SFT think about applying for permits to protest in the Chinese government’s specially designated “protest zones” in and near Beijing during the Olympics?

Here’s my second Olympics blog for FT08.tv where I discuss the Tibet protests in Beijing and around the world and why they matter. I also respond to those few observers who like to suggest that our protests are “missing the point.”

I did this video blog a few days ago for FT08.tv but with all the action happening I haven’t had a second to post it here until now. Please check out Han’s message about the launch of FT08.tv below.

From Han-shan:

Friends–
I’m pleased to introduce Students for a Free Tibet’s new channel broadcasting throughout the worldwide uprising for Tibetan freedom during the Beijing Olympics: Free Tibet 2008 Television, or FT08.TV.

With all the Olympic actions for Tibet taking place and particularly the incredible success of the ‘opening’ banner action outside Beijing’s ‘Bird’s Nest’ stadium on Aug. 6th and subsequent media storm here in the UK, it took some time to get FT08.TV ready for prime time. » Read the rest of this entry «

With only a few hours to go until the Olympics opening ceremonies, we have been busy this week making sure the world hears about the ongoing crackdown inside Tibet and understands the true nature of the Chinese government in the lead up to the Games.

Tibetans and people of conscience from all over the world have taken bold, brave, and creative action this week in a manner that is truly overwhelming. And it is only the beginning.

On August 6, while China’s leadership was trying to focus the world’s attention on their strictly controlled torch relay, four courageous activists climbed poles outside the Bird’s Nest stadium and hung two huge banners to draw attention to the Tibetan people’s struggle for freedom and the ongoing violent repression inside Tibet. The activists were detained and quickly deported. Check out www.FreeTibet2008.org to find out more about this action and to see the incredible global coverage it garnered. » Read the rest of this entry «

Please go to sfttv.org to watch SFT’s press briefing from earlier this week.

Students for a Free Tibet’s leadership speaks out one week before the opening of the Beijing Olympics updating members of the press on current conditions inside Tibet, and SFT’s plans to continue to use Beijing’s Summer Olympics to shine a spotlight on China’s brutal occupation of Tibet.

Good morning and thank you everyone for joining us for our pre-Beijing Olympics press briefing.

My name is Lhadon Tethong and I am the Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) International based in New York City. As many of you know, Students for a Free Tibet is a grassroots network of students, youth and people of conscience in over 100 countries working in solidarity with the Tibetan people in their struggle for freedom and independence.

For the past 8 years we have played a leading role in the international campaign to first stop China from getting the 2008 Summer Olympic Games and then to bring awareness to the Chinese government’s use of the Olympics as a political tool to whitewash their human rights record and legitimize their illegal and brutal occupation of Tibet. » Read the rest of this entry «

This is why.

From the Huffington Post:

Guilty of Being Tibetan: Scenes from a Lhasa Prison

“Before, this was the best place, but now it’s like a prison. When I watch TV, everything is lies. So I walk in the streets where the soldiers ask for my identity papers. If there’s the smallest mistake, you’re finished. We should be tolerant but we can’t be tolerant any more.”

This is how one young Tibetan man describes life in Lhasa these days in an interview that was smuggled out of Tibet.* It’s a rare eye-witness testimony by someone who was jailed in the aftermath of the protests in March this year.

This same individual (whose identity is withheld for obvious reasons) describes his arrest and subsequent experiences at Lhasa’s Gondzhe detention center. Chinese police entered his house “broke down five doors, checked everything, threw it all on the floor and hit everyone present. It was like a burglary.” » Read the rest of this entry «

In the small Beijing suburb of Hongxialu, there’s a new force in town. The government has recruited a special unit of 288 residents, mostly middle-aged or elderly, to work as “security volunteers” in the lead-up to the Olympics.

Wearing red armbands with Olympic badges, the volunteers loiter near the entrance gates of their neighbourhood. They scrutinize every visitor and report to the police if they see anyone unfamiliar or suspicious.

The volunteers of Hongxialu are just one cog in a vast machinery of surveillance in Beijing these days. Across the city, a network of 400,000 informants and volunteers has been mobilized to keep an eye out in their communities. The old Maoist system of neighbourhood committees, which had largely fallen into irrelevance in the past decade, is being revived again as a tool of social control.

When the last gold medal has been awarded and the athletes have left, this network of informers – along with an estimated 300,000 surveillance cameras and a strengthened security apparatus – will remain as perhaps the biggest legacy of the historic Beijing Olympics. » Read the rest of this entry «

From The Sunday Times
July 13, 2008

Beijing is putting on a show of moderation but internal party papers reveal a sinister crackdown

Michael Sheridan in Hong Kong

Internal Communist party documents have revealed that China is planning a programme of harsh political repression in Tibet despite a public show of moderation to win over world opinion before the Olympic Games next month.

A campaign of “re-education” has been outlined in confidential speeches to meetings of Communist party members by Zhang Qingli, the hardline party secretary of Tibet.

Verbatim texts of the speeches have been kept out of the Chinese media but were printed in the April and May editions of the Xigang Tongxun (Tibet Communications) — a classified publication restricted to party officials. Translations were handed to The Sunday Times in Hong Kong.

Zhang has admitted behind closed doors that the Chinese authorities in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, face “a tide of encirclement” and that anti-Chinese violence in March “destroyed social stability”. He has warned that “final victory” is far off. » Read the rest of this entry «

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