Here's a link to a few photos of the Dublin, Ireland, Tibet Support march. Great support from the passers-by, many of whom joined in spointaneously, and lots of media coverage, TV, radio, newspapers etc.
http://public.fotki.com/Chaiwallah/tibet-support-demo-/
Again many thanks to those who supported the Avaaz petition.
Cheers,
Chaiwallah
And here's an update on the situation in Tibet, which you may be helping to change.
THE PRESENT SITUATION IN TIBET
Recent reports from inside Tibet paint a grim picture of life under Chinese rule for most Tibetans. In the twenty years since economic "liberalisation" was unleashed in China, the Chinese authorities have made much publicity concerning the huge amounts of money and resources they have poured into the "modernisation and development" of Tibet.
Sadly, while there has been significant growth of infrastructure, and, as is clearly visible, a vast array of new building in Tibetan towns and cities, the great majority of this primarily benefits the Han Chinese immigrant population, now the majority population in Tibet as a whole. (Recent estimates: 8 million Chinese: 6 million Tibetans in greater Tibet.)
Compared with the time of the protests twenty years ago, (as a result of which PRC President Hu Jintao, then Party Chief in Tibet, imposed martial law and instituted a policy of "merciless repression" as an asnwer to the "Tibetan Problem"), conditions in Tibet now are worse.
1). The vast influx of Han Chinese immigrants includes not just Party cadres, military personnel and business entrepreneurs, but also huge numbers of the unskilled labourers who are also flocking to China's coastal cities and industrial zones. This means that in Tibet, even the most menial jobs are taken by Han Chinese. Any hope of skilled employment depends on the ability to speak Mandarin, which leaves the majority of Tibetans at a severe disadvantage. Unemployment among Tibetans is estimated at around 85%.
2). The recently constructed Golmud to Lhasa railway facilitates the rapid influx of ever more Han immigrants, but also increases the speed and efficiency with which China can exploit and export to the industrial heartland of China the vast mineral wealth of the Tibetan plateau. A recent figure has put Tibet's oil reserves in trillions of barrels, not to mention the 120 other industrially valuable minerals (including gold, coal and uranium) in Tibet. The exploitation of these resources is via a colonial model of the most rapacious kind. The benefit to Tibet and Tibetans is virtually nil.
3). Tibet's strategic position on the borders of India and the old Soviet satellite states accounts in part for the massive military presence on the plateau. Observers tell of military convoys several miles long moving through Tibet on a regular basis. But as the Lhasa railway is due to be extended down to the Himalayan border regions, including the cities of Shigatse and Gyantse, there is every indication that this railway has a significant military purpose, over and above its publicised role in promoting tourism to Tibet. China has an arsenal of rail-based nuclear missiles near Golmud, which can now be moved in a matter of hours from the north of Tibet to the Indian border, should China feel the need to direct them south of the Himalayas.
4). In terms of direct human rights abuses, reports tell that Tibetan women who have more than two children are required to pay a huge fine, several thousand yuan, as much as a year's income, or face enforced sterilisation, routinely without anaesthetics.
(The fact that in Tibet people are allowed to have two, rather than just one child, is another motivation behind Han immigration.). In the northern province of Amdo, now Chinese Qinghai, the nomadic herdsmen have been forced off their grasslands into huge settlement camps, with few resources and virtually no prospect of employment. These camps are effectively prisons, as travel through Tibet is tightly controlled and severely restricted.
5). Religious freedom is effectively non-existent, as we have seen in recnt days from the monks who broke through the police cordons to talk to foreign journalists in the Jokhang in Lhasa. The monasteries, nunneries and temples are tightly controlled, and have resident party officials to ensure adherence to the "Patriotic Re-education" programme. As the current Party Chief in Tibet, Zhang Qinli, said recently,"The Chinese Communist Party is the only true Buddha for Tibetans...people who do not love the Motherland are not qualified to be human beings"
Displaying, carrying or even owning a photograph of HH the Dalai Lama ( whom Mr.Zhang decribed as a "wolf in monk's clothing, a devil with a human face,") carries a likelihood of at least three year's imprisonment on the charge of "splittism."Imprisonment invariably entails torture, and a loss of political rights and hopes of employment upon release.
6). Finally, in the wake of the recent uprisings all across greater Tibet, reports tell of house-to-house searches for anyone suspected of taking part in protests. Arbitrary large-scale arrests have left Tibet's prisons so overcrowded that prisoners are being transported to prisons in mainland China. Reports tell of heaps of dead bodies in the prisons, and hundreds of severely beaten and tortured prisoners recieving neither food, water nor medical aid. Water and food supplies have been cut off, not only to the major monasteries in and around Lhasa, but also to whole Tibetan communities in some of the "Chinese" provinces of former Tibet.
The situation in Tibet is critical. Whether or not the Olympic Games are an issue, there is no doubt that endorsing China's plans to carry the Olympic torch through Lhasa, Tibet and up Mount Everest is to condone China's grotesque propaganda farrago in a country that is suffering under China's harsh colonial regime.
It would be a serious mistake for the international community to assume that after the passing on of the present Dalai Lama, or even before, the populace of greater Tibet will continue to adhere to His Holiness's policy of non-violence. Most of the younger Tibetans feel that after twenty years, there is nothing to show by way of improvement in their situation, for a policy of non-violence. They have been forgotten and ignored by the international media, except when there are significant protests. After 60 years of Chinese rule, many Tibetans have declared they would rather die than continue to live under their present conditions.
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April 2008 
Chaiwallah
Access: Public
