From: Yizhi Li <liyizhi@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 21, 2008 8:11 PM
Subject: Response to the Tibet Riot
To: Daniel Fiori <fiori.daniel@gmail.com>


In light of the protests in the West and the beliefs commonly held by the majority of the population here, we want to share some facts and opinions which are overlooked and ignored by the Western press.

Firstly, the Western media has continually been misrepresenting facts about the Tibet riots. For example, what is frequently seen as Chinese police assaulting monks is actually police in Nepal attacking separate protestors - they wear very different uniforms - yet the media uses them to portray brutal force used by Chinese police. Seeing such media portrayals, most would conclude the Chinese are using excessive force: our own Stephen Harper and other political heads have all called for
more "restraint" from the Chinese government. However, the real footage shows Chinese police helping the situation, escorting injured civilians to safety, etc.

This video shows some examples of misleading news reports and includes some graphic images of violence from protesters towards civilians at the end:

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=uSQnK5FcKas

And some more fabricated news: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=EVdx3Qh5Ct8

The truth is, the Tibetans have been attacking the Han Chinese living in the city. Han property destroyed, Han people attacked on the streets, stoned, beat with poles, burned... Unlike most protests occurring in North America and Europe, these rioters had real victims in sight and thus, there are more injuries and deaths than normal. In fact, the initial police forces were mostly unarmed, causing the riots to last so long.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3578941.ece
Beating of one man (eye witnesses said he looked dead after mob was done, though video stops much earlier):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8zrILo7CF0
Footage of attacking property (and people breaking into bank):
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=qYdnkUbzgRU
 
As to the issue of Tibetan independence, first, it should be noted that Tibet never was independent. For thousands of years it has been a part of the Chinese empire. In fact, one Chinese emperor sent his army to help install the very first Dalai Lama. In the period up to the People's Republic of China taking over in 1951, Tibet had been officially a part of the Republic of China under the Kuomintang, the Party that lost the civil war to the Chinese Communists. The current Dalai Lama was installed in Lhasa with an armed escort of Kuomintang troops!* Note at that time, the western countries all recognized the territory of China including Tibet as being ruled by Kuomintang.

Secondly, the 1959 uprising of the Buddhist monks was supported by both Britain and the CIA. When it failed, they helped establish a new permanent residence for the Dalai Lama in India, and the CIA and US government has continued to fund him until the present day. After the release of this information by the US State Department in 1998, "the Dalai Lama's organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution".*

For the Tibet prior to 1950, it was nothing like that which has been portrayed by the mainstream media, again and again. Please refer to the article Friendly Feudalism – The Tibet Myth written by Professor Michael Parenti, one of North America's leading radical writers on U.S. imperialism and interventionism, fascism, democracy and the media. http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Parenti_Tibet.htm

In addition, China is composed of 56 ethnic groups with Han being the majority. The policies have always been leaning towards the minority as the natural setup of a socialism country. The short video "True Reason behind the Tibetan Riot" at http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=oG21V-JwWYs briefly talks about that. Although the Chinese government is nothing from perfect in addressing a lot of the issues, one can appreciate that the reality is quite different from the image of an "inhumane" China that the western media has painted.
 
Now, of course, the Chinese government is not free of the responsibility of such a riot. China's infamous "Reform" has turned away from socialism into a barbaric capitalism (such as during Karl Marx's time in Europe). This "Reform" had reversed the Chinese central government's direction from serving the ordinary Tibetan populace to focusing on hoaxing and serving the Tibetan elite. The net result is that the elite become increasingly dissatisfied not getting more power, whereas the people at the bottom are suffering the same as the majority of the Han people all over China.

Nevertheless, this does not grant the West, lead by the U.S., the right to demonize China in order to pressure, provoke, and threaten the Chinese government into allowing more exploitation of its population by foreigners. More analysis about the hidden global agenda that caused and is mobilized by this incident is presented in a Chinese article called 拉萨暴乱：超越1840年的最大买单 by 张宏良. What is sad is that the Chinese government itself has blocked such an article from many Chinese websites (if searched from Chinese search engines such as Baidu).

The good news is that despite the weakness shown by the Chinese government (since the reform), many Chinese are raising their own voices and fighting back against this western propaganda machine, as we see from various online videos and forums. The Chinese people had suffered enough around the last Qing dynasty, from many imperial invasions from the West and Japan, due to the government's cowardliness and corruption. This time, the Chinese people will simply not tolerate it again! China is not another Iraq! Despite it does have weapons of mass destruction, it will simply not be demonized to give others a reason for military advance or economical exploitation!

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* Michael Parenti, Friendly Feudalism – The Tibet Myth:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Parenti_Tibet.htm
More videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J5XvjDyWG8&NR=1
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Note: We do not agree 100% of all the above videos. Please see and judge for yourself. We are merely presenting various views that are different from the mainstream media.

Please take the time to forward this message or any of these videos to friends and anybody who finds this issue important.
 

Liz and Daniel