In this week’s dose of anti-news: stuff you should care about but won’t hear in the news, we have video footage of Chinese officials shooting and killing Tibetans. Warning: Video contains disturbing footage. Not for children.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KagCLqdwsgU
At first they said they didn’t know. “I’ve seen the reports about this, but I’ve no knowledge of the specific situation,” Liu Jianchao, a ministry spokesman, told a news conference in Beijing about the shootings at Nangpa La.
That’s when the pictures showed up.
Only hours later, China admitted. But now they claimed self-defense. A Xinhua report said that the people trying to cross the border attacked the soldiers, who were then “forced to defend themselves.”
Fear of monks and a child
Not a chance, reported Romanian climber Sergiu Matei. â€The Chinese militias were hunting Tibetans onto the glacier…shooting them like rats, dogs, rabbits – you name it.†And Sergiu has video to prove it.
Taipei Times wrote 2 years back about a China/Tibet incident, “the cowardice of the Communists is apparent. How truly timid and insecure they are to fear monks and a child.”
The Nangpa La refugees were mostly kids led by a young nun who was shot dead and a number of young adults. Out of the group of 70 people, 40 escaped but 30, including a large number of children still remain unaccounted for.
The video clearly depicts that the Tibetans had their backs to the soldiers, were unarmed, and offered no resistance. The nun who died, Kelsang Namtso, appears to have been shot in the back. During the shooting, a mountaineer in the cameraman’s group can be heard saying: “They are shooting them like dogs.”
That’s part of the report from MountEverest.net of all people. Due to it’s rapid rate of technological modernization and economic boom, people often dismiss the Chinese authoritarian regime. They associate it’s newfound capitalism with newfound freedoms and rights.
It simply isn’t the case. While China is, yes, opening up, it’s people are not free yet. There is a genocide going on in Tibet. A silent genocide but its there, through the use of forced assimilation, tactical destruction of cultural heritage sites, and of course countless unreported executions. China’s main news agency, XinHua, is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the government. It’s “negative” coverage of natural disasters gives it the impression of being open, but it is merely an illusion. XinHua will never be critical of any government-led action, much less injustices, in the nation.
Yet Western people seem so uncaring. I was watching the Daily Planet the other day. They covered this news of Chinese Olympians training for the 2008 games. Here was this girl, who, since the age of 3 was forced to train 12 hours a day in gymnastics. She was never able to go to even elementary school. She was never allowed to see her family, except for 2 hours during Saturdays. She is now 12, and her entire youth was sacrificed for a potential spot in the Olympics. When covering the story, the Daily Planet didn’t bat an eye at this. In fact, they spun this story as a tale of incredible dedication. While thankfully the child was well, a system that throws lives away as such for furthering its own status certainly is not.
China is not a free society. That should not be forgotten.