Tuesday, March 18

To boycott or not to boycott?

Ever since news of Everest being closed down for this season, I kept thinking why would china do such a thing? does it really matter to them that a climber or climbers will start protesting about freeing Tibet and all that? It seems a bit childish, considering that the Chinese are pretty well known for not giving a shit about what everybody else in this world thinks, anyway ... Anyhow, this seems to be the case, because since then the South Side of Everest has been reputably been closed by Nepal, right after a loan from China to Nepal of 121 million dollars.

And then the protests in Tibet began. Not to allow the climbers to climb Everest, mind you, but to campaign for a free Tibet. Monks, nuns and whoever was there started marching chanting "Free Tibet". The protests started on the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet. Then Lhasa was closed down and put under yet another, more fierce, martial law. Nuns protesting in peace were more than intimidated. Monks protesting were taken to jail and never seen since then. Tibet was declared off limits for any foreign journalist (whereas they had been allowed free pass in all of China because of the Olympic games). Not that the international media took notice of it at first ... Mounteverest.net was showing pictures of Lhasa in flames way before BBC ever decided to pick the news up.

And then I remembered the shootings of Nangpa La pass, in which nuns and children were crossing the border to Nepal using this pass (around 5000m), to go see the Dalai Lama in India and attend tibetan schools there (since they are not allowed to do so in Tibet). What happened was that the chinese border patrol started shooting them in the back (nuns and children, mind you). We would not have heard of this if some climbers that were in the Cho Oyu base camp would not have alerted the international media. The chinese of course claimed that it was self defense, that the nuns and children were attacking them with stones (?!). Later footage showed that they were shot in the back. The Chinese issued no more comments after that. One little boy was arrested and I think is still in custody, making him the younger detainee ever (7 years old).

And then I read that Chinese troops are being moved to Tibet, despite UN urges for restraint. The "unrest" spreads, and the Dalai Lama fears bloodshed (that is, even more than the 80 people that died so far - official numbers, of course) and says that China has performed a "cultural genocide" on the tibetan people.

And now I ask myself. Is this the country to hold the Olympic Games for 2008? I thought the Olympic games were supposed to bring peace to the world, everybody forgetting about their conflicts and rage while we fight on the sports field? According to their figures, China executed 1010 people last year (according to Amnesty international, there were 8000). Apparently, the family of the executable (omg) pays for the execution ... How, and why was china awarded the Olympic games by the IOC? How can the torch pass through Tibet after everything that has happened there and is still happening? Why is there no way in which a peaceful consensus is reached?

Would a boycott be the solution for china to see that it should care about what the rest of the world says?

No comments: