Protests in Tibet

crvlvr

From the link posted by random..

Clearly explains the reason why the march was halted. Althogh i would like to know the details of the said agreement beween India and Tibetan exiles. Now what about other demonstrations...

. Clearly, other peaceful protests that were not stopped by the Indian govt. If they are, as some claim, trying to appease China, they should be clamping down on all these demonstrations

More info on the relationship between India and China and the Tibet issue, from 2003..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3015840.stm

I think we have to start differentiating between official statements from the Tibetans in exile and other non official (or as I called it earlier) "right wing" groups

I was watching an interview when the Dalai Lama was asked who has been most supportive of his efforts, he said he had to thank India.

dzibead

And he does have to thank India, which has given shelter to himself and over 100,000 other Tibetans.

But sadly (and fruitlessly,in my view), even the DL is trying to appease China, with his "Middle Way" demand for "autonomy" instead of actual independence - a change of position from his early days in exile. This has caused confusion and distress among a lot of Tibetans, including the DL's own oldest brother, who want full independence but who don't want to depart from the DL's party line. They are thus torn between two powerful emotions, and any Indian who examines his own country's history and its freedom struggle should be sympathetic to the individuals who are caught in these conflicting currents.

The agreement between the Tibetan Govt in Exile and the Govt of India is that the Govt in Exile won't engage in "political" activity against China on Indian soil. Clearly this promise was extracted by India out of concern about China's reaction. And if the agreement is interpreted to apply to the actions of private individuals, as distinct from the official actions of the TGIE, then it does have the effect of muzzling the political expression of those individuals in an effort to placate the Chinese - and is deplorable. And it's also deplorable for the TGIE to try to speak for these individuals, too, and to purport to make a commitment on their behalf, that binds them as individuals to supposedly giving up their right to express deeply held political convictions.

And I still don't see what's "right wing" about any of this?

abracax

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Come up with the best logo to accompany the phrase:

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I will personally immortalize the winning logo on a T-shirt and send same to the winner.

Trying to reason with the Chinese about Tibet is like discussing algebra with a cobra - the best you can hope for is a bit of distraction.

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shashank.aggarwal

well, I am sure that members are aware about the way Marches are organized in India..in most of the cases the organization or party doing it should have informed the authorities in advance.

And I am not sure from where does the logic of suppressing the Tibet movement and appeasing China came into being...haven't you guys seen the pictures of police treating the Indian protesters...haven't you seen them being arrested, Lathi charges, OR water cannoned..

The administration might be wrong or right in doing so, but because this time they stopped Tibetans from doing it, lets not point fingers at the intentions of India..

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dzibead

There's no information to suggest that the Tibetan demonstrators who were the subject of machadinha's first post were detained or turned back because they didn't have a proper permit (which they would no doubt have been denied because of the political nature of their march - in what is called in the U.S. a "prior restraint") or because they were unruly or anything like that. They were barred from marching/demonstrating because of the political content of their demonstration. In the U.S., we allow reasonable "time, place and manner" restrictions on protests and demonstrations (e.g., you have to get a permit, you have to follow a certain route, etc.), but those restrictions CANNOT be based on the political message or political content of the demonstration and they cannot be used as a surreptitious way of curbing political expression. They have to be imposed in a content-neutral manner, and they have to be reasonably related to concerns like public safety.

I'm also not saying that the Indian police never use force against non-Tibetan demonstrators, or that they never try to stop demonstrations and marches based on the political content of demonstrations by non-Tibetans rather than on lack of a permit or unruliness of the crowd, etc. But that does not change the fact that the restrictions on the Tibetan demonstrators in this instance appear to have been entirely politically motivated and were not content-neutral. And the most obvious rationale for the content-based restrictions is not wanting to get cross-wise with China.

shashank.aggarwal

I just read the story in The Hindustan Times, it is written that they marched for 25 KM before they were stopped. They planned to enter the Tibetan Autonomous Region in China and that would have meant trouble...

This throws a whole new angle now..

dzibead

Not that much of a different angle. The govt could obviously have restricted an attempt to cross the border without completely halting the March after only 25 km.

For example, they could have imposed something like the reasonable "time, place, and manner" restrictions I mentioned in my previous post. In order for this group to cross directly from India to China, they were going to have to go through pretty sensitive border areas where there's usually a heavy military presence and where nobody, regardless of their political "message," is allowed just to wander around and cross over the border without passing through immigration controls. But instead of imposing a narrow time, place and manner restriction that would be applied to the Tibetans the same way it would be applied to anyone else who tried to cross the border, the govt imposed an unnecessarily overbroad restriction by completely halting the march. And they did this based on its political content, not because the marchers were trying to cross the border, which they obviously were not even close to doing at this point.

Indian law (like most other countries' laws) simply doesn't protect political expression to the same degree that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution does, which requires restrictions to be content-neutral and limited to reasonable time,place and manner restraints; so there's no point in trying to deny that the Indian govt's actions here were primarily based on suppressing inconvenient political opinion. If they just wanted people not to cross the border - which would be a narrow time/place/manner restriction -- they could have done that without completely halting the march.

shashank.aggarwal

so this means that we agree that the March was politically motivated as well, and would have impacted India politically ?

dzibead

Of course the march was politically motivated. But you (and crvlr, above) seemed to be denying, or at least questioning, the contention that the government's halting the march had anything to do with appeasing China.

Let me put this to you as simply as I can: It is the official policy of the government of India to prohibit anti-Chinese political activities by Tibetans on India soil. Period. And this policy is clearly intended to appease China.

Do you deny this? Do you doubt it? Then I suggest you do a little research on P.M. Atal Bihari Vajpayee's 2003 visit to China.

ebby

We can debate with a country which is sensible and rational in its governance. When India is having problem with china regarding its own land where is the question of it solving the Tibetian issue except for giving moral support and refugee status to the tibetians which they have done admirably !

shashank.aggarwal

I am in no position to put an argument on this..as I have not gone into much details of this issue..however its pretty clear that GOI had an understanding with the Dalai Lama that there will be no Anti-China activities on Indian soil...

So again the question rises that how is India suppressing the Tibet movement or appeasing China, as one of the conditions of the refuge itself means that no anti-china movements on Indian soils..I guess this is the way any other government would handle it...

Secondly these marchers didn't seek any permission from local authorities as they deemed this march as their right ..the HT reports that they have been ordered to stay inside Kangra itself, and the order has come from Ministry of Home affairs..

dzibead

India obviously has the sovereign ability to make whatever political choices it deems appropriate for its own political purposes (e.g., by appeasing China in order to enhance trade prospects, or to fend off border disputes, or whatever). You can argue that it's appropriate (or even desirable) for India to prohibit Tibetans from engaging in anti-China political activity on Indian soil because India needs to do that in order to achieve its own political objectives. But please don't deny that that's what the Indian government is doing, because the government's policy has been stated very clearly and directly. And that policy has also been criticized by at least some Indians, including some with very solid national security credentials, not just by Tibetans or Western "Tibet lovers".

shashank.aggarwal

You sound very logical in this, however you also need to understand that if India was to support anti-china movement, it would be that there would have been more frequent military engagements between India and China..

Its not about denying what India government is doing, because people are making fool of themselves when they say that GOI is suppressing or appeasing someone, with this one of incident. Whereas on the first hand it had a been a condition of the refuge itself..

Secondly, this is the nature of democracy, whatever the government does, good, bad or ugly would always be criticized by one section or the other..so I no longer draw conclusions from the criticism, unless my mind supports it..

vistet

So your argument is that the individuals Karma , Kelsang et al. should be aware of that their rights of political expression were given away by another individual , some fifty years ago ? Does this mean that they will be set free once the present Dalai Lama passes away ?

The idea that individuals can be held responsible for an agreement that they had no possibility to influence is a feudalistic concept.

The agreement to refrain from anti-Chinese activities was not an individual statement , though , it was made with the head of the Tibetan state - ancien regime . Is the new , democratically elected government , which Dalai Lama is not a part of , bound by the old regimes agreements ? Interesting point - but irrelevant : the marches we are seeing now are not actions of the TGIE.

As a private citizen I could have opinions about refugees calling my government cowards . The Norwegian resistance fighters during the Second World War would have ample opportunity to do so , but it would not affect their status in Sweden , even with German troops on our borders.

As for pointing the finger at China , demanding these actions , I think by now we can let go our demands of propriety : the Chinese embassies have a looong record of aggressive demands on all levels, worldwide. Some of the latest stunts by the embassy in Stockholm include demands that the Ethnographic Museum should not host a Tibetan chapel, and -somewhat confusing - that a Chinese dance troupe should not be allowed to perform : it later turned out that one or two of the dancers were Falun Gong practitioners.

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xiaojie

was watching a BBC Report on the protests march....& ouch blank goes the screen here for a good 10 mins.....yikes..!!