I have recently found out that your against of the upcoming 29th Beijing Summer Olympics in August 2008 and so, i have here an article from the NEWSWEEK© to update you some information:

THE LAST WORD
Tibet’s Holy Man In Waiting

Born into a nomadic Tibetan family in 1985, Apo Gaga was 7 years old when he was proclaimed the 17th Karmapa: the latest reincarnation of the head of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. That made the child the religion’s third highest leader, after the Dalai and Panchen Lamas. He soon began a rigorous training program. Then, at the age of 14, after the Karmapa started to find Chinese control suffocating, he made a daring escape by helicopter and horseback to Dharamsala, India, seat of the Tibetan government in exile. There he’s continued his training in earnest. Given the Dalai Lama’s age, he’s just 73, the length of time it will take to name a successor and the disappearance of the Panchen Lama in 1995 (China was anxious to control the selection of his reincarnation), many assume the young Karmapa could soon become Tibetan Buddhism’s most-senior figure. On the eve of his 23rd birthday, the monk spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Sudip Mazumdar about his recent trip to America, the global pro-Tibet protests and boycotting the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

How do you see calls to boycott the Beijing Olympics?
China is a big country and does not belong only to the Communist Party. It belongs to the Chinese brothers and sisters. The world needs to give them more chances and opportunities to show their growth and express their views. The Olympics are such a chance. I am not for the boycott, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama is also [against of boycotting the games].

…..

You see sir, instead of boycotting the Games of the 29 th Olympiad, we must support the BOGOC to have a more peaceful Summer Games that will create peace & harmony throughout the world….

including China & Tibet…

Thank you for your time sir,

Concerned Citizen for a peaceful world

You may think that you are the best, but to the Chinese- to me, you are not. Chinese are also not the best but they are united. When you watch the olympic torch relay on television,you can see how many China supporters are there just to support the Beijing Olympics. The number was much over the Tibet supporters.

To me, I think that Americans are the rough ones, the brainless ones. All they see in their eyes is the word “kill”, to rob Arab of the oil they have, to earn money. See, lets say about paper. Who is the one who invented paper? Ts’ai Lun of China! MANY MANY of the things that the Americans had thought to have been invented by THEMSELVES are actually inspired, improved or totally taken from China inventions!!!!!!

The Americans are not actually that bad.They also have their good points.They are good in thier English. Their influence had been great and people all over the world started learning it. However, can you say that the Chinese do not have a good point? They are good in chinese.

All that Westerners know that China has BAD, BAD , BAD air pollution ;toys that are DETRIMENTAL to kids life. But I hope that they will know that the countries who are importing the toys from China wanted low-cost toys. How can the these manufacturers provide very, very good qualitied ones with so little money. However, have the Westerners seen the effort that the China government had made to improve the starndard of things in the country.
China is the third largest country in the world.It is very hard to control all parts of the China to work the way it should be. I hope that the Westerners will understand.

That is true, America’s econamy is going down with China’s going up. The Americans have no doubt taken China a treat to their powerand status in the world.

No body is perfect. no country is perfect. Asians and the Americans must learn to accept each other differences,adapt each others’ culture and make the world a better way to live in.

Second: I have many friends either living in China or with a Chinese background. I also know several Europeans who are living there at the moment (one in Peking). Yes there is pollution, yes there is poverty, yes there are a lot of serious problems! But hey countries considered “good” are facing these problems (just think about the mess Katrina caused a few years back and how paralyzed the entire state was!!).

I think the Chinese can pull these games of. And do well at it too! It’s ridiculous to say that “because their chinese” or because they’re not caucasian they can’t pull this of.

And why is it that everyone is in support of a free Tibet when it’s only the aristocratic Tibetans who want a free Tibet anyway? How about all the other lower class Tibetans who want to ‘break’ away from China? Their lives have been improved drastically since China became involved in their affairs, check out the education rates if you want support.

Half of all these “Free Tibet” people don’t even know where Tibet is, anyway. Where is there information? Their backup? ANd why is it that these political issues have to be included in the Olympics? Ancient olympics marked a time for peace, when all wars were stopped in the name of sports. I guess Americans are all so corrupt now that they aren’t afraid of dishonoring the ancient tradition of the Olympics, hm?

The Hypocrisy and Danger of Anti-China Demonstrations

by Floyd Rudmin

We hear that Tibetans suffer ‘demographic aggression’ and ‘cultural genocide’. But we do not hear those terms applied to Spanish and French policies toward the Basque minority. We do not hear those terms applied to the US annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1898. And Diego Garcia? In 1973, not so long ago, the UK forcibly deported the entire native Chagossian population from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. People were allowed one suitcase of clothing. Nothing else. Family pets were gassed, then cremated. Complete ethnic cleansing. Complete cultural destruction. Why? In order to build a big US air base. It has been used to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq, and soon maybe to bomb Iran and Pakistan. Diego Garcia, with nobody there but Brits and Americans, is also a perfect place for rendition, torture and other illegal actions.
When the Olympics come to London in 2012, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu will certainly lead the demonstrators protesting the ‘demographic aggression’ and ‘cultural genocide’ in Diego Garcia. The UN Secretary General, the President of France, the Chancellor of Germany, the new US President and the entire US Congress will certainly boycott the opening ceremonies.
The height of hypocrisy is this moral posturing about 100 dead in race riots in Lhasa, while the USA, UK and more than 40 nations in the Coalition of the Willing wage a war of aggression against Iraq. This is not ‘demographic aggression’ but raw shock-and-awe aggression. A war crime. A war on civilians, including the intentional destruction of the water and sewage systems, and the electrical grid. More than one million Iraqis are now dead; five million made into refugees. The Western invaders may not be doing ‘cultural genocide’ but they are doing cultural destruction on an immense scale, in the very cradle of Western Civilization. Why is the news filled with demonstrators about Tibet but not about Iraq?
And as everyone knows but few dare say, ‘demographic aggression’ and ‘cultural genocide’ can be applied most accurately to Israel’s settlement policies and systematic destruction of Palestinian communities. On this, the Dalai Lama seems silent. Demonstrators don’t wave flags for bulldozed homes, destroyed orchards, or dead Palestinian children.
The Chinese Context
The Chinese government is responsible for the well-being and security of one-fourth of humanity. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated, not even when done by Buddhist monks.
Chinese Civilization was already old when the Egyptians began building pyramids. But the last 200 years have not gone well, what with two Opium Wars forcing China to import drugs, and Europeans seizing coastal ports as a step to complete colonial control, then the Boxer Rebellion, the collapse of the Manchu Dynasty, civil war, a brutal invasion and occupation by Japan, more civil war, then Communist consolidation and transformation of society, then Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Such events caused tens of millions of people to die. Thus, China’s recent history has good reasons why social order is a higher priority than individual rights. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated.
Considering this context, China’s treatment of its minorities has been exemplary compared to what the Western world has done to its minorities. After thousands of years of Chinese dominance, there still are more than 50 minorities in China. After a few hundred years of European dominance in North and South America, the original minority cultures have been exterminated, damaged, or diminished.
Chinese currency carries five languages: Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uigur, and Zhuang. In comparison, Canadian currency carries English and French, but no Cree or Inuktitut. If the USA were as considerate of ethnic minorities as is China, then the greenback would be written in English, Spanish, Cherokee and Hawaiian.
In China, ethnic minorities begin their primary schooling in their own language, in a school administered by one of their own community. Chinese language instruction is not introduced until age 10 or later. This is in sharp contrast to a history of coerced linguistic assimilation in most Western nations. The Australian government recently apologized to the Aboriginal minority for taking children from their families, forcing them to speak English, beating them if they spoke their mother tongue. China has no need to make such apology to Tibetans or to other minorities.
China’s one-child-policy seems oppressive to Westerners, but it has not applied to minorities, only to the Han Chinese. Tibetans can have as many children as they choose. If Han people have more than one child, they are punished.
There is a similar preference given to minorities when it comes to admission to universities. For example, Tibetan students enter China’s elite Peking University with lower exam scores than Han Chinese students.
China is not a perfect nation, but on matters of minority rights, it has been better than most Western nations. And China achieved this in the historical context of restoring itself and recovering from 200 years of continual crisis and foreign invasion.
Historical Claims
National boundaries are not natural. They all arise from history, and all history is disputable. Arguments and evidence can always be found to challenge a boundary. China has long claimed Tibet as part of its territory, though that has been hard to enforce during the past 200 years. The Dalai Lama does not dispute China’s claim to Tibet. The recent race riots in Tibet and the anti-Olympics demonstrations will not cause China to shrink itself and abandon part of its territory. Rioters and demonstrators know that.
Foreign governments promoting Tibet separatism and demonstrators demanding Tibet independence should look closer to home. Canadians can campaign for Québec libre. Americans can support separatists in Puerto Rico, Vermont, Texas, California, Hawaii, Guam, and Alaska. Brits can work for a free Wales, and Scotland for the Scots. French can help free Tahitians, New Caledonians, Corsicans, and the Basques. Spaniards can also back the Basques, or the Catalonians. Italians can help Sicilian separatists or the Northern League. Danes can free the Faeroe Islands. Poles can back Cashubians. Japanese can help Okinawan separatists, and Filipinos can help the Moros. Thai can promote Patanni independence; Indonesians can promote Acehnese independence. New Zealanders can leave the islands to the Maori; Australians can vacate Papua. Sri Lankans can help Tamil separatists; Indians can help Sikh separatists.
Nearly every nation has a separatist movement of some kind. There is no need to go to Tibet, to the top of the world, to promote ethnic separatism. China is not promoting separatism in other nations and does not appreciate other nations promoting separatism in China. The people most oppressed, most needing a nation of their own, are the Palestinians. There is a worthy project to promote and to demonstrate about.
Danger of Demonstrations
These demonstrations do not serve Tibetans, but rather use Tibetans for ulterior motives. Many Tibetans, therefore, oppose these demonstrations. Many Chinese remember their history and see the riots in Lhasa and subsequent demonstrations as another attempt by foreign powers to dismember and weaken China. There is grave danger that Chinese might come to fear Tibetans as traitors, resulting in wide spread anti-Tibetan feelings in China.
Fear that an ethnic minority serves foreign forces caused Canada, during World War 1, to imprison its Ukranian minority in concentration camps. For similar reasons, the Ottomans deported their Armenian minority and killed more than a million in death marches. The German Nazis saw the Jewish minority as traitors who caused defeat in World War 1; hence deportations in the 1930s and death camps in the 1940s. During World War 2, both Canada and the USA feared that their Japanese immigrant minorities were traitorous and deported them to concentration camps. Indonesians fearing their Chinese minority, deported 100,000 in 1959 and killed thousands more in 1965. Israel similarly fears its Arab minority, resulting in deportations and oppression.
Hopefully, the Chinese government and the Chinese people will see Tibetans as victims of foreign powers rather than agents of foreign powers. However, if China reacts like other nations have in history and starts systematic severe repression of Tibetans, then today’s demonstrators should remember their role in causing that to happen.
Conclusion
The demonstrators now disparaging China serve only to distract themselves and others from seeing and correcting the current failings of their own governments. If the demonstrators will take a moment to listen, they will hear the silence of their own hypocrisy.
The consequences of these demonstrations are 1) China will stiffen its resolve to find foreign influences inciting Tibetans to riot, and 2) the governments of the USA, UK, France and other Western nations will have less domestic criticism for a few weeks. That is all. These demonstrations can come to no good end.

Floyd Rudmin can be contacted by email at Floyd.Rudmin@psyk.uit.no

We have been labelled the “Yellow Peril”, the “Sick man of East Asia”.
Now we are becoming a Superpower, we are being labelled a “threat”.
When we closed our doors, you introduced us opium to “open the market”.
When we refused opium, you sold them to us by “gunboat diplomacy”.
When we believe in free trade, you rebuke us for taking your jobs.
When our country was divided, you sent in the armies to share the political loots.
When our country is united, you call the “liberation of Tibet” an invasion.
We try Communism, you hate us as communist elements.
Now we have accepted capitalism, you also hate us for monopolizing the market.
When we have over a billion people, you say we are over populating this planet.
When we implemented family planning, you say it is a violation of human rights.
When we were poor, you treated us like nobody.
when we lend you money, you complain it has made your debts too high.
When we build our industry, you say we are polluters.
You buy affordable products from us while we get the blame for “greenhouse effect”.
When we buy oil, it is the “exploitation of Africa and support for genocide”
When you launched a war for oil, you called it “liberation”.
When we have unrest, you would interfere and come in to impose law on us.
When we deal with the riots according to the law, you call it “brutal suppression”.
When we remain silent, you say we do not have freedom of speech.
When we are no longer silent, you call us xenophobic that we are all brain washed.
“Why do you hate us so much ?” we cannot help but ask.
We do not hate anyone. Has the Western world always been civilized, fair and tolerant?
“Do you understand us?” we cannot but doubt.
“Are you kidding ?” you said, “We have the best media in the world – AFP, CNN & BBC.”
Life can not be too CNN!

“I’ve met people from tibet who have told me horrible stories”? That’s it? I’m sure people from China have horrible stories too – I wonder what the family of the man who was disembowelled by Tibetan monks would think of Tibet?

I can’t believe this can even consitute part of your argument. I’m neither Chinese nor American, have no fixed standpoint on this issue, and even I cringed when I read that.

Your ability for clinical dissection of social issues leaves me stunned.

I think it is about time us Americans stand up for human rights and freedom. If China cannot respect human rights, we should boycott them until they understand. That is the only language a third world, uneducated country will understand. I am proud to be an American, bringing freedom and liberty across the globe. If it wasn’t of us, Iraq would still be under dictatorship. we Amercians sacrifice and brought freedom and life into Irag. Most of those Iragi people does not know what freedom is, of course not, they are all so uneducated, that is why we have to step in to help them. As the number 1 country in the world, we have a responsibility to teach poor country what freedom, courage and liberty is.

Most of you fools, think we Americans are violent, but if we are so wrong, why are we the number 1 country in the world? If it wasn’t of use, the Europe would not exist today, a.k.a. WWII

The chinese are wrong, they pick on those poor monks in Tibet, all they want to do is pray in their temple and huts. The chinese also eat dogs and cats, it just shows how barbaric they are.

We americans have to step up, and lead the world to freedom. U.K. and France are too weak to do it, that is why we have to.