The Chinese government continued their now-deafening nationalistic drum beat.

The People’s Armed Police News said a “political mobilization order” had gone out to security forces telling them to prepare for an arduous time ensuring order and control before and during the Games.

“The drums of war are sounding, a decisive battle is at hand,” the newspaper said. “For the sake of the Chinese nation’s image and for the honor of the People’s Armed Police, let us never forget our duty.”

The Olympics are a battle? China is preparing for a war? Tell me – who’s making sure that the Olympics are a political event again? Indeed, by the looks of things, the Chinese government would be happiest if the Olympics became a pitched, violent conflict on the streets of Beijing.

One thing that history has shown us – be it in protests at American political conventions, meetings of the G8, or even going back to the Hells Angels in Bass Lake, California – when police and paramilitary forces are told to act like violence and riots are coming, the militaristic preparation for how to deal with civil unrest tends to lead not to peace, but to more violence. Teach people to look for “a decisive battle” and you increase the likelihood that those people will assume any situation they are in is such a decisive battle. And when the stakes of the battle are “the Chinese nation’s image” then even someone sitting in non-violent protest in Tiananmen Square might be seen by these police as what “the drums of war” had sounded to alert them to. That is, China’s nationalistic rhetoric, use of bellicose language, and preparation of police forces for a “battle” make it all the more likely that these police and security forces will respond to any situation with violence. We have seen China’s military and police forces use deadly force against peaceful Tibetan protesters in the last month. Statements like the one above in the People’s Armed Police News seems to make certain that similar actions will continue up to and even during the Beijing Olympics.

Via commenter news4vip, It looks like Japan’s royal family will not be attending the Beijing Olympics. While there are other underlying factors for this decision, including China exporting tainted food to Japan, it appears that China’s violent crackdown in Tibet has been the deciding factor in the government’s decision not to ask the royal family to go to Beijing.

Japan’s Emperor Akihito and other members of the royal family are unlikely to attend the Beijing Olympics amid concerns here about China’s crackdown in Tibet and other issues, a report said Wednesday.

The Japanese government thinks it is not a good time for a rare royal visit because of the unrest in Tibet, a recent health scare over Chinese-made “gyoza” dumplings and a spat over disputed gas fields, the Sankei daily said.

“We were planning not to ask royals to go even before the gyoza incident (surfaced in January). It is all the more true now that the Tibetan unrest occurred,” it quoted an unnamed government official as saying.

Uighur activist and former political prisoner Rebiya Kadeer has an op-ed in today’s Washington Post expressing the Uighur peoples’ solidarity with Tibetans in their pursuit for freedom. East Turkestan, like Tibet, is under a military occupation by China and Uighurs live under intense oppression at the hands of China. Worse, East Turkestan has never received the same international attention as Tibet. Kadeer should be a household name for her principled leadership through nonviolence; despite her peoples’ largely anonymous struggle, Kadeer has been a great ally to Tibetans and she shows it in this piece.

Kadeer writes:

Because of our shared experience under the Chinese regime, Uighurs stand in solidarity with the Tibetan people and support their legitimate aspirations for genuine autonomy. The Chinese government’s fierce repression of religious expression, its intolerance for any expression of discontent, its discriminatory economic policies and its support for the movement of migrants have linked Tibet and East Turkestan and have led to the tremendous social tensions in both regions. To Beijing, any Tibetan or Uighur who is unhappy with China’s harsh rule is a “separatist.” Uighurs are also labeled “terrorists.”
…
The Olympic torch arrived in Beijing yesterday, and at the end of June it will be carried through Tibet, to the top of Mount Everest and through the streets of Lhasa. From there the flame will be carried to the cities of East Turkestan, including Kashgar, a center of traditional Uighur culture, and Urumqi, the regional capital. China calls the torch relay a “journey of harmony,” hoping the unifying spirit of the Olympics will disguise the reality of its brutal rule.

But true harmony can never be achieved as long as the Communist Party enforces policies of cultural assimilation and political persecution in Tibet and East Turkestan. If China wishes to become a responsible member of the international community, its government must engage in a meaningful dialogue that addresses the sources of discontent in Tibet and East Turkestan.

Read her whole piece, which includes some basic background on China’s oppression in East Turkestan and the Uighur struggle for independence from Chinese rule.

Starting on March 10th, Tibetans around Tibet, often lead by monks and nuns, staged peaceful protests. Chinese security forces responded by cracking down on monasteries and nunneries, initially around Lhasa but elsewhere as well. In response, on March 14th, riots took place in Lhasa. There have been continual acts of protest – almost entirely non-violent – since then, but the Chinese government has repeatedly claimed that they have “evidence” that the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile orchestrated the uprising, both violent and non-violent. More recently, China has been putting forward statements from a monk who they say was an agent provocateur for the TGIE. Despite weeks of insisting they have evidence to support their claims, the Chinese government has never produced evidence that the TGIE or the Dalai Lama instigated an uprising from exile, nor have they held press conferences or produced the monk referred to in statements to answer questions about how he allegedly incited the uprising. In short, China’s statements are as proven as my statement that Hu Jintao and Jacques Rogge like to bugger goats together under a full moon (which is true, according to a goat handler who has confessed to me that he provided the goats for Hu and Rogge’s evenings of bestiality).

The latest unsubstantiated charge coming out of China is that Tibetan monks, under the guidance of the Dalai Lama, were preparing suicide squads with equipped with tens of thousands of sticks of dynamite and other small arms, which had been hidden in Lhasa. I’ve read a lot of press accounts, both in American politics and foreign news, where the journalist is dealing with spurious claims, but this Associated Press story of China’s latest made up shit evidence against the Dalai Lama is as close as I’ve ever seen an article come to the written equivalent of laughing the subject out of the room and down the hall amidst a hail of boos. The article refutes China’s claims as spurious not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six separate times:

The Tibetan government-in-exile swiftly denied the charge, and the Bush administration rushed to the Tibetan Buddhist leader’s defense, calling him “a man of peace.”

“There is absolutely no indication that he wants to do anything other than have a dialogue with China on how to discuss the serious issues there,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey said…

“Tibetan exiles are 100 percent committed to nonviolence. There is no question of suicide attacks,” Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the government-in-exile in Dharmsala, India, said Tuesday. “But we fear that Chinese might masquerade as Tibetans and plan such attacks to give bad publicity to Tibetans.”

Experts on terrorism and security risks facing Beijing and the Olympics have not cited any Tibet group as a threat…

“There is no evidence of support for any kind of violence against China or Chinese,” said Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet expert at Westminster University in London….

Andrew Fischer, a fellow at the London School of Economics who researches Chinese development policies in Tibetan areas of China, dismissed Wu’s warnings as “completely ridiculous.”

I wonder what it’s like to be called a liar by six different sources in one article.

I think that this is far more for domestic consumption than to get international approval for their violent, murderous crackdown in Tibet. These sorts of unsubstantiated claims foment nationalism and we’re already seeing a serious uptick in Han Chinese nationalist sentiments against Tibet. I can’t possibly believe that the Chinese government thinks the world will buy their lies about Tibetan monk suicide squads sent on missions by the Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Via Mikel Dunham, Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) have formed the Tibet Caucus in Congress and have invited their colleagues to join them. Here’s the text of the Dear Colleague letter Abercrombie and Rohrabacher:

Dear Colleague,

In 1941-1951, the newly established Chinese Communist regime sent military troops to occupy Tibet. Since then, Tibet has been under active Beijing rule. The occupation of Tibet by the Peoples Republic of China’s (PRC) has been disastrous for the Tibetan people. Most monasteries, religious structures and other aspects of Tibetan Buddhism and culture were either totally destroyed or damaged. There are reports that over 1 million Tibetans died during the first 30 years of PRC rule. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has mercilessly repressed policital dissent and religious freedom of Tibet.

In 1959, at the age of 24, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, fled Tibet, under threat of imprisonment and execution, and went into exile in India with a group of his followers. He remains there today, along with a Tibetan refugee community of tens of thousands, and he is still widely regarded as the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, their foremost advocate, and a figure of international stature. He has stated his willingness to accept cultural autonomy for Tibet under the Chinese Constitution. He has also been willing to negotiate with Beijing and has advanced a number of very moderate proposals regarding Tibet’s future status. The Communist regime, however has only met this attempt at accommodation with stiff opposition, and is currently instigating yet another crackdown in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics.

Congress has stood strongly by the Tibetan people as they bravely struggled for their rights. In 1991 the Congress passed a resolution stating that Tibet is an occupied country. We cannot stand silently by and watch as another wave of brutality and oppression sweeps across the country by the Beijing regime. We urge you to join the Tibetan Caucus to uphold the rights of the Tibetan people and give a voice to those that the Chinese regime has silenced.

Hopefully there’s a good enrollment in the new Tibet Caucus.