Here’s another great Al Jazeera clip from yesterday. In the video are SFT’s deputy director Tenzin Dorjee and SFT Board member Yangchen Lhamo, who deals with some especially tough questions. Yangchen also delivers one of the clearest explanations of how the contemporary Tibetan independence movement has used non-violence in the response to Chinese brutality, as well as an explanation for what advocates for independence like Students for a Free Tibet see as Tibet’s future post-independence.

In Canada, the Globe & Mail has a forceful editorial criticizing China’s anti-Tibetan rhetoric around March 10th. It’s one of the hardest hits I’ve seen the Western press make against the Chinese propaganda machine on behalf of Tibet:

China’s Xinhua news agency responded to the statements with a story saying that, after the rebellion five decades ago failed, China carried out the “long-delayed emancipation of millions of serfs and slaves in Tibet.” The report also describes China’s efforts to modernize Tibet by citing road-building statistics. But if everything is so rosy for Tibet, then how come Chinese authorities have the country under lockdown, with independent journalists and human-rights observers barred from travelling there? Amnesty International this week condemned continuing human rights violations carried out against the general Tibetan population, including arbitrary arrests and prolonged detentions of peaceful protesters and other prisoners of conscience, as well as torture.

Chinese officials have prepared a white paper that pretends that all protest in Tibet is stirred up by Western anti-China forces. This is comical in light of the flaccid response by Western governments to China’s misrule in Tibet and their failure to support Tibetans’ fight for autonomous status for their nation – a status that even China pretends to observe.

Despite all of this, including his strong statements of yesterday, the Dalai Lama said he and the government-in-exile remain committed to what he termed the “path of truth and non-violence” in dealing with the Chinese government. If only China’s masters were so enlightened.

The New York Times also has an editorial which encourages the Chinese government to hold meaningful negotiations with the Dalai Lama.