Credo Action, who I consult for on FISA, has put out an action alert asking their members to contact Congress and ask them to call on the Chinese government to stop their violent response to Tibetans’ peaceful protests.

Tibet Will Be Free reports that all three remaining presidential candidates have put out statements on the protests in Tibet. Read the statements from Senators Clinton, McCain and Obama. The words are good, but what would be better is actual leadership from these Senators to get their colleagues and President Bush to speak out and take action to stop China from continuing to kill Tibetans. TWBF makes suggestions for what we should be asking of our leaders in government:

1) Demand that the Chinese government immediately lift the media blackout in Tibet by letting in foreign reporters, and tell China that any crackdown in Tibet is unacceptable.

2) Press the US government and the UN Human Rights Council to immediately send international observers into Tibet

3) Support a boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games’ opening ceremony, as suggested by the French foreign minister.

This protest in the UK is just plain cool.

Ann Applebaum has a great piece in Slate on the uprising in Tibet. While emphasizing the important role cell phones have played in distributing information about the protests, she moves on to a serious discussion of China’s repressive policies towards Tibet and how the current communist party leadership of Hu Jintao has aggravated Sino-Tibetan relations by prioritizing the repression of Tibet. Of note:

And like all its predecessors, the Chinese imperial class cares deeply about the pacification of the imperial periphery, more so than one might think.

For proof that this is so, look no further than the biography of Hu Jintao, the current Chinese president—and also the former Communist Party boss of Tibet. In 1988 and 1989, at the time of the last major riots, Hu was responsible both for the brutal repression of dissident Tibetan monks and dissidents and for what the Dalai Lama has subsequently called China’s policy of “cultural genocide“: the importation of thousands of ethnic Han Chinese into Tibet’s cities in order to dilute and eventually outbreed the ethnic Tibetan population.

Clearly, the repression of Tibet matters enormously to the members of China’s ruling clique, or they would not have promoted Hu, its mastermind, so far. The pacification of Tibet must also be considered a major political and propaganda success, or it would not have been copied by the Chinese-backed Burmese regime last year and repeated by the Chinese themselves in Tibet last week. Tibet is to China what Algeria once was to France, what India once was to imperial Britain, what Poland was to czarist Russia: the most unreliable, the most intransigent, and at the same time the most symbolically significant province of the empire.

Keep that in mind, over the next few days and months, as China tries once again to belittle Tibet, to explain away a nationalist uprising as a bit of vandalism. The last week’s riots began as a religious protest: Tibet’s monks were demonstrating against laws that, among other things, require them to renounce the dalai lama. The monks’ marches then escalated into generalized, unplanned, anti-Chinese violence, culminating in attacks on Han Chinese shops and businesses, among them—as you can see on the cell-phone videos—the Lhasa branch of the Bank of China.

However the official version evolves, in other words, make no mistake about it: This was not merely vandalism, it could not have been solely organized by outsiders, it was not only about the Olympics, and it was not the work of a tiny minority. It was a significant political event, proof that the Tibetans still identify themselves as Tibetan, not Chinese.

Tibet Will Be Free reports:

At 4pm today GMT (midnight in Tibet) the Chinese Government’s deadline for the cessation of protests in Tibet expires. The government has threatened “harsher treatment” for Tibetans who continue to challenge the government. With at least 30 protesters already dead we’re fearing what harsher means. Tibetans and Tibet supporters around the world are gearing up to make sure the eyes of the world remain on Tibet to protect the Tibetans risking their lives in protest.

The Dalai Lama spoke out strongly yesterday, saying that Chinese authorities “simply rely on using force in order to simulate peace, a peace brought by force using a rule of terror.”

See incredible video footage of protests in Labrang HERE
And photos from Amdo and other protests HERE

Lhasa Rising makes a great point on the essential ineffectiveness of Chinese efforts to break Tibetans’ will for independence.

Tibet will be free, and here is why. As the Guardian (UK) wrote, “Beijing can be benevolent or brutal, but it will find that national identity lies at the heart of Tibetan demands for self-determination.”

…

Against Tibet, China has tried repression, it has tried genocide, it has tried communist revolution, it has tried capitalist consumerism, and it has tried demographic assault. Nothing has worked. Tibetans refuse to be brought to their knees. To the Chinese government, I say this: You have failed. Tibet will never be a part of China. Tibet will be an independent country once again, and the sooner you accept that, the better it will be for China, Tibet, and the world. Tibet will be free.

China has been trying to get Tibetans to forget their claims to independence and stop yearning for freedom for over 50 years. No matter what they’ve done, they have failed to make Tibetans drop their desire for freedom. They will continue to fail and, as Lhasa Rising says, Tibet will be free.

Update:

The NY Times reports on the Dalai Lama’s response to China’s deadline:

The Dalai Lama accused China on Sunday of waging “cultural genocide” against his followers in Tibet and called for an international inquiry into the suppression of protests there, his strongest defense to date of Tibetan Buddhists who have staged an uprising against Chinese rule.

Speaking at the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile, the Dalai Lama endorsed the right of his people to press grievances peacefully against the Chinese authorities, and said he would not ask Tibetans to surrender to Chinese military police by midnight on Monday, as Beijing has demanded. He said that he had no moral authority to do so and that Tibetans had beseeched him not to capitulate to that demand.

“Whether the Chinese government admits it or not, a nation with an ancient cultural heritage is actually facing serious dangers,” the Dalai Lama told reporters during an emotionally charged news conference here. “Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some kind of cultural genocide is taking place.”

His comments reflected the inflamed passions among Tibetans abroad, who view the revolts, the largest since the late 1980s, as a watershed moment.

China has blocked access to YouTube, as reported by the China Media Blog and Shanghaist. Buckaroo Bonzai at Tibet Will Be Free notes:

While there have been previous incidents of blockage and filtering behind the Great Firewall, this is an extremely blatant and obvious case that is tied directly to the large number of clips on YouTube which show protests both inside Tibet and around the world.

Speaking of access to information in China, CNN Beijing Bureau Chief Jaime FlorCruz says that the network has been given permission to enter Tibet only twice in the last ten years.

Also at Tibet Will Be Free, Lhasa Rising points out that the Bush administration had removed China from America’s human rights black list three days before the PRC started their violent response to peaceful protests in Tibet. The Bush administration had previously refused to explain why China was removed from the black list in a Q&A with the AFP:

Q: Why was China removed from the worst offenders? They were on the list last year, but they’re not there this year.

A: I think if you look at the introduction to the report, the — describes China — that its human rights record remain poor.

The Bush administration and the State Department must reevaluate their previous assessment. A minimal response would be to put China back on the black list for their abuses in Tibet.

Radio Free Asia is reporting from sources in Lhasa and around Tibet that protests are spreading to other cities and monasteries around Tibet. Demonstrations have taken place around Kham, Amdo, and elsewhere. RFA reports over 100 dead Tibetans in Lhasa from the Chinese military response to the protests.

Radio Free Asia reports that 80 Tibetans have been killed  and Lhasa has been put under marshal law, though the number of dead is unclear. Tanks or armored personnel carriers have been deployed and China continues to respond with violence to Tibetan protests.

“We saw two dead at Ramoche temple, two in the garden, two at the Ganden printing house, and those Tibetans who went to take food to prisoners in Drapchi prison saw 26 Tibetans shot after they were brought in on a black vehicle,” one Tibetan witness said. “There could be about 80 dead, or more, but there is too much commotion here to give an exact number.”

RFA has also reported that four Tibetan monks from Ganden Monastery have self-immolated. Outside of Lhasa, in Gansu Province, at least 1,000 monks held a protest at Labrang Monastery.

“The Chinese authorities deployed all military in the Lhasa area and sent tanks. There could be several hundred tanks and they were shooting into the crowds,” one witness told RFA’s Tibetan service. “They also fired several rounds of tear-gas.”

The spread of protests outside of Lhasa, China’s use of the military to put down the protests, and the institution of marshal law are all signs of the scale and significance of these protests. China appears to be showing no restraint in their response, despite loud cries from the rest of the world.