The Gavel has a great report from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s meeting in Dharamsala, India with the Dalai Lama:

The delegation was welcomed to the community by thousands of Tibetans in a ceremony led by Speaker Karma Choephel of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. The delegation then proceeded to an audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama where they discussed issues relating to Tibet and the plight of Tibetan refugees in India.

In the afternoon, the delegation visited the Tibetan Children’s Village, supported in part with U.S. assistance, that educates and looks after thousands of Tibetan children, most of whom are orphans and new refugees from Tibet. The delegation also met with Tibetan monks, nuns, and children who recently escaped Tibet over the perilous Himalayan mountain passes.

In addition to Speaker Pelosi, the congressional delegation includes the Chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Ranking Member James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, Chairman of the House Democratic Policy Committee George Miller of California, and Representatives Jim McDermott of Washington, Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of Columbia, Anna Eshoo of California, Jay Inslee of Washington, Rush Holt of New Jersey and Hilda Solis of California.

The members of the Congressional delegation have done a very honorable thing in the pursuit of freedom and peace. I want to extend my deep thanks to all of them for traveling to Dharamsala to meet with the Dalai Lama and raise the profile of what is happening in Tibet. Further, this meeting by high level congressmen and women of both parties shows that the US takes the Tibetan government-in-exile seriously and at least some of our elected officials are looking to engage the TGIE to produce a solution for Tibet.

During her remarks, Speaker Pelosi said one thing that particularly stood out to me for its prescience and moral clarity:

If freedom loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China’s oppression in Tibet we have lost all moral authority to speak on human rights anywhere in the world. The cause of Tibet is a challenge to the conscience of the world. A challenge we can help meet.

Amen. Those of us who are free to speak and free to act have a moral obligation to do so in the face of oppression and injustice. It does not matter where we live and what transgressions our forefathers may have committed – we are here today and we have the power and thus the obligation to speak out. And now, with clarity and immediacy, we must speak out for Tibet.

There is no doubt, Tibetans are being murdered at the hands of the Chinese government for speaking out themselves. You see, Tibetans simply are not free to speak out for their independence. Doing so, as untold thousands are doing now, comes at the risk of beatings, imprisonment, torture, and death. But we do not face the same hurdles outside of China and so we must speak out for Tibet. The obligation that comes with our privileges as free people who love our freedom is that we must exercise it on behalf of those oppressed peoples who yearn for freedom. Right now our obligation lies with the plight of Tibetans who seek independence from China’s brutal military occupation.

Twenty-six Nobel laureates, including Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, have issued a statement condemning China’s violent response to protests in Tibet.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled all the way to Dharamsala, India to meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Dharamsala is the seat of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. It’s a real statement about Speaker Pelosi’s commitment to promoting peace and freedom in Tibet at a time when China is shown itself as a brutal and violent government willing to use limitless force against Tibetans. Thank you, Speaker Pelosi, for leading on this and being an example of how free people can exercise their power to stand on principles to promote human rights anywhere in the world.

My friend Josh Schrei has been one of the most committed, effective activists for Tibet in the US as the Tibetan independence ovement grew in the States over the last 20 years. He has a piece on Guerrilla News Network about the current situation in Tibet, evaluating what it should mean that some Tibetans may be resorting to violence against the Chinese occupation. Josh puts forward a serious discussion of the tension between the Dalai Lama’s long efforts through non-violence and the recent attention some acts of Tibetans finally turning to violence have commanded from the global community. It’s definitely worth a read.

Lhadon Tethong, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, has a great post up dissecting the false notion that the protests in Tibet are violent when Tibetans throw stones and break windows. Lhadon writes:

as Nelson Mandela said, “the occupier bears prime responsibility for enduring conflict.” The true source of these riots and the violence, perceived or real, is the Chinese government’s illegal occupation of Tibet – and we must never lost sight of this basic context. Even if Tibetans wield guns and launch a violent attack tomorrow, the Chinese government is to blame because Tibetans are only responding to the Chinese government’s oppression. Beijing is lucky that the Tibetans are only throwing stones right now.

Let’s get real: how much violence can a few hundred unarmed monks and lay Tibetans really commit against a few hundred tanks and several thousand armed police and riot troops? China keeps all the guns, and uses them too – and yet they want to cry about Tibetans breaking their windows?

The whole post is worth a read, as Lhadon lays out clearly the force that Tibetans are up against and what we must remember about the circumstances in Tibet as we continue to get news about Tibetans efforts to attain freedom in their own land.

This is truly remarkable. The International Campaign for Tibet points out a piece by an Asian military analysis publication that describes how an elite Chinese military unit deployed in Lhasa to stop protests and masked their presence by covering up markings on their tanks and personnel carriers.

A defence analysis publication reported that some of the ground forces deployed in Lhasa during the crackdown of the last few days were elite squads from the People’s Liberation Army in addition to People’s Armed Police troops. Writing in Kanwa Defence Review, an on-line magazine on East Asian security, defense, diplomacy and weapons technology development, the analyst reported: “[Images] show that the new T90 APCs and T92 wheeled armoured vehicles belonging to the elite ground force units appeared on the streets of Lhasa in the same day of the crackdown. These equipments have never been deployed in China’s armed police before.” (www.kanwa.com).

The analysis concluded: “To cover up the involvement of regular armed forces in the crackdown, all of the above armoured vehicles are seen using a piece of white cloth to cover the traditional red star mark of the PLA Army, and the red stars painted on the steel helmets of the troops were also erased. The fact that the trump rapid reaction combat units of Chengdu Military Region entered Lhasa at such a fast pace deserves high attention. Moreover, the troops entered Lhasa with heavy equipment.

This author’s analysis is that the newly built Tibet railroad has given China the capability to transport troops very rapidly.

Lhasa Rising at Tibet Will Be Free notes:

This after the Chinese government strenuously denied it was sending the People’s Liberation Army to deal with the Tibetan protests:

Officials said the police and paramilitary police had been called in to deal with the protests, not the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, which led the bloody 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

“The PLA is not involved in the handling of the incidents,” said a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao.

I guess China just didn’t want the world to know that they are using their much loved railway to Tibet as a means of rapidly turning their military on Tibetans who have the courage to demand independence. It truly is a testament to China’s hubris to think that pasting sheets over military insignia’s would hide the fact that those insignias are painted onto tanks used to suppress a popular uprising in Tibet. Yep, just look at that picture. I can’t see the insignia so there’s no way a military unit was deployed in Lhasa, no sir. How stupid does the Chinese government think we are?

Students for a Free Tibet has put out an action alert, calling on their supporters to contact Jacques Rogge of the International Olympic Committee and ask him to immediately withdraw the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Tibetan provinces of Amdo and Kham from the Olympic torch relay route.

Today’s New York Times has a very telling piece on relations between Tibetans in Tibet and Han Chinese settlers on its front page. The examination of relations between the two groups show that Tibetans continue to believe that they are an occupied country and long for the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet. On the other side, Han Chinese settlers repeatedly state their hatred and disdain for Tibetans, who for some reason aren’t peachy keen on them coming in to exploit Tibet’s natural resources and economy for their own gain. Han chauvinism leads the best jobs to Chinese settlers and largely relegates Tibetans to low-paying jobs.

After decades of heavily financed efforts on the part of China to strengthen its control over Tibet and to tame the country’s far west through gigantic infrastructure projects and resettlement of Han Chinese from the east, the outbreak of protests and a fierce crackdown by Chinese security forces in and around Tibet have laid bare a harsh reality of policy failure.

There is no legalized ethnic discrimination in China, but privilege and power are overwhelmingly the preserve of the Han, while Tibetans live largely confined to segregated urban ghettos and poor villages in their own ancestral lands.

What the Times is describing here is China’s policy of population transfer, which dilutes the number of Tibetans inside Tibet, making them a minority in their own land. Population transfer violates international law and is a major element in China’s cultural genocide Tibet.

Later in the article, the Times reports of a journalist trying to enter a town in Gansu province that had had protests and being refused after extensive questioning. That reporter was then followed by plainclothes Chinese police officers, who videotaped his conversations with monks from afar. It truly is hard to overstate the paranoia and hatred the Chinese government has towards a free press and what full journalistic access to Tibet would reveal to the world.

I suggest you read the full Times article, as it lays bear some of the underlying tensions that exist. Tibet is an occupied country and it is no shock to anyone that is familiar with the colonial occupations of countries like Ireland, Algeria, and India that there would be animus between the populations crammed together by imperial policies.

Update:

The AP reports that China has now admitted that protests have spread further and wider around Tibet (including provinces outside of the Tibetan Autonomous Region which are also part of Tibe’s historical territory).

Armed police and troops poured into far-flung towns and villages in Tibetan areas of adjacent provinces to reassert control as sporadic demonstrations continued to flare. Foreigners were barred from traveling there and tour groups were banned from Tibet, isolating a region about four times the size of France….

The reports confirm previous claims by exile Tibet activist groups that the protests had spread. Foreign journalists have been banned from going to Tibet and have found it increasingly difficult to travel to areas in other provinces with Tibetan populations….

On Thursday morning, an Associated Press photographer was turned away from a flight to Zhongdian in Yunnan province. There were 12 policemen, including with automatic weapons at the check-in counter. The police said that no foreigners were allowed to travel to Tibetan areas due to the protests. [Emphasis added]

China is turning Tibet into the world’s largest prison. Journalists are not allowed in, foreigners are not allowed in, and Tibetans are not allowed out. Not only is Tibet on lock-down, but even areas with Tibetan populations are under restriction. These are all facts that highlight the reality: China has been and continues to rule Tibet through a forceful and violent military occupation. There is no way to look at China’s actions in the last week and a half and come to any other conclusion.

The protests in Tibet over the last week and the Chinese government’s violent response to them have cast a bright light on Tibet in an unparalleled way compared to recent international attention. People around the world are waking up to China’s repressive tactics and horrendous attitude towards human rights. Moreover, these events are bringing people to recognize that not only is the crackdown appalling, but these protests in Tibet part of are themselves a response to China’s illegal military occupation of Tibet. The world has seen many independence movements achieve success in recent years, so in some regards I believe the world is well primed to stand in solidarity with those Tibetans striving for independence from Chinese military rule.

The Irish Times letters to the editor includes one clear example of this:

Madam, – Ireland and several other EU countries have recognised Kosovo as a sovereign independent nation in spite of opposition from Serbia and the power of Russia.

Will Ireland now be consistent in the application of its political and moral principles and recognise Tibet as a sovereign independent country against the political and economic might of China? If not, the recognition of Kosovo will risk be seen as political opportunism . – Yours, etc,

ANTHONY OBRIEN, NEIL STEEDMAN, Tibet Support Group Ireland, Arklow, Co Wicklow.

Also of note, in response to the protests in Tibet and China’s violent response, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced that he will meet with the Dalai Lama on his next visit to the UK.

Gordon Brown has said he will meet Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama when he visits the UK. […]

During prime minister’s questions, he also said he had spoken to China’s premier on Wednesday morning and had urged an end to violence.

Throw in statements from Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama, France’s Foreign Minister, Hindu organizations in India and the Burmese monks supporting Tibetans’ nonviolent protests and condemning China’s violent response, and there is a clear global sentiment rising in support of Tibet.

This situation in Tibet and the international attention to it will not go away any time soon. The Olympics are five months away and the whole world will be watching not only for who wins and who loses, but for how China treats Tibet. Now that Beijing and the International Olympic Committee have announced that China will be allowed to run the Olympic torch through Tibet, we can be sure to see Tibetans respond. That such an announcement would come amid a violent crackdown in Tibet is simply disgraceful. THe IOC has always claimed to be non-political and it is clear that they mean it in the absolute truest sense, as they put blinders on all moral understanding of human beings as equals deserving of humane treatment and rubber stamp China’s murderous oppression of Tibetans in their own land.

This announcement by Beijing can be seen as nothing other than an escalation in their efforts to assert physical claim over occupied Tibet. Rather than stopping violence and bringing calm to the region, China has chosen to stick their finger into Tibetans eyes in a promise for future confrontations. For those that think a boycott of the Beijing Olympics is unwarranted, I’d advise you to at least recognize that the torch should not be run through military-occupied Tibet. That’s something that the IOC can and should stop immediately.