Human Rights Watch Reports: China Relocating Tibetans

BBC has the story.

Religious Freedom Around the World: the 2013 Report

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s annual report is out (in PDF).   I'm just going to quote part of its assessment of China:

The Chinese government continues to perpetrate particularly severe violations of the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief. Religious groups and individuals considered to threaten national security or social harmony, or whose practices are deemed beyond the vague legal definition of “normal religious activities,” are illegal and face severe restrictions, harassment, detention, imprisonment, and other abuses. Religious freedom conditions for Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims remain particularly acute, as the government broadened its efforts to discredit and imprison religious leaders, control the selection of clergy, ban certain religious gatherings, and control the distribution of religious literature by members of these groups. The government also detained over a thousand unregistered Protestants in the past year, closed “illegal” meeting points, and prohibited public worship activities. Unregistered Catholic clergy remain in detention or disappeared.

Ave atque Vale, Sydney Wignall

This brief bio reads like one heck of a thriller.  Someone make a movie!  Blurb:

Sydney Wignall, who has died aged 89, was an adventurer who, in 1955, led the first Welsh Himalayan Expedition with the intention of climbing Gurla Mandhata, at 25,355ft the highest peak in Chinese-occupied Tibet; in his book Spy on the Roof of the World (1997), he recounted how he was captured by the Red Army and held in jail accused of being a CIA spy.

I just put that book on my to-read list.  Goodness, is it just me or do the Brits really publish some smashing obits?  Wignall then became a marine archaeologist excavating shipwrecks from the Spanish Armada.  Wow, what a glorious bad@$$!

Quirky Asia Files: Beijing Issues New Rules on Reincarnation

Good luck with that, pal.  Blurb:

It’s probably best not to even try making sense of Beijing’s pronouncements on the 14th Dalai Lama and other Tibetan spiritual leaders: you’ll only make your head hurt. Last week the officially atheist Chinese government’s State Administration for Religious Affairs disclosed plans to enact a new law forbidding the 75-year-old Buddhist deity to be reborn anywhere but on Chinese-controlled soil, and giving final say to Chinese authorities when the time comes to identify his 15th incarnation.

Human Rights Spotlight: the Geneva Summit

Maggie's Farm offers a reminder that the Geneva Summit is beginning today.

Here is the WSJ blurb about the meeting:

The Geneva Summit -- organized by groups such as U.N. Watch and Freedom House, and chaired by Poland’s Lech Walesa and the Czech Republic’s Vaclav Havel -- will bring together political dissidents from China, Iran and Burma, rights activists for the Tibetan and Uighur peoples, a survivor of the North Korean gulag, plus a former Sudanese slave named Simon Deng who plans to speak about “the gross human-rights abuses by radical jihadists and the Islamic government in Khartoum . . .

I should clarify that the full name of the meeting is the "Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance, and Democracy." (Yes. Democracy.)

Contrast, my darlings, with the rogues' gallery that is the UN's Human Rights Council.

The HopeChange Chronicles: The Presidential Asia Trip Was a Flop

It's a big goose egg. HOPECHANGE! Even the leftist New York Times is critical:

It was also dispiriting that Mr. Obama agreed to allow China to limit his public appearances so markedly. Questions were not permitted at the so-called press conference with Mr. Hu, and his town hall meeting with future Chinese leaders in Shanghai not only had a Potemkin air, it was not even broadcast live in China. It’s obvious that the last thing Mr. Hu wanted was to get questions about issues like his brutal repression in Tibet and Xinjiang. That doesn’t explain Mr. Obama’s acquiescence in such restrictions.

Mr. Obama did not meet with Chinese liberals. In Shanghai, he spoke of the need for an uncensored Internet and universal rights for all people, including Chinese, and at the press conference he called for dialogue between Beijing and the Dalai Lama. He delayed a meeting with the Dalai Lama until after the China summit and should schedule it soon.

President Obama was elected in part because he promised a more cooperative and pragmatic leadership in world affairs. We support that. The measure of the success (or failure) of his approach won’t be known for months, and we hope it bears fruit. But the American president must always be willing to stand up to Beijing in defense of core American interests and values.

Well, DUH! And what about the hopes and aspirations of Asian democrats? We've nothing much to be happy about.

You'll notice that I by and large didn't post much about the president's Asia trip. That's because I was too busy pounding my head against the wall. Ai-ya!

Quirky Asia Files: Craziest Chinese Political Analysis I've Seen (Today)

I don't even know where to start.

Nerd Analysis: Ian Buruma on China's Problematic "Soft Autocracy"

Professor Buruma has an interesting piece in the Los Angeles Times. Here is a blurb:

To justify its monopoly on power, the Chinese technocracy relies on the promise of order and constant economic growth, and the claim of patriotism. Supporting the government is patriotic, and criticism is unpatriotic or, if voiced by foreigners, "anti-Chinese."

But in the end, the greatest flaw in the system is that China's boring rulers are self-perpetuating. They cannot be punished by the ruled for their incompetence. Great blunders go unchecked. Conflicts of interest fester or erupt in violence. China's technocracy might well look stable and successful for a while to come, but it is unlikely to last without basic political reform. Some think the new wave of technocrats, the ones who went to Harvard or Yale, can bring this about themselves. One never knows. But as long as they haven't, I'd still put my money on messy democracy any day.

Hear, hear!

Read the whole thing. I offer the opinion that the autocracy isn't that soft. Ask a dissident. Or an exploited farmer in the Chinese hinterland. Or a Tibetan.

What Fresh Hell Is This? -- Tom Friedman Cheerleads for Chinese Autocracy

Well, I never was a fan of NY Times columnist Friedman, but you've got to read this total drivel in order to believe it! Here is a blurb:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.

WHAT???

"Drawbacks"? Political prisoners (see this from LAST WEEK), brutal repression (*cough* Tibet! Tiananmen Square! *cough*), threat of force (*cough* Taiwan! *cough*), widespread censorship, no press freedom, no religious freedom (*cough* Falun Gong! The underground Christian church! *cough*) . . . Are these just "drawbacks" and piffling downsides? Friedman is a FOOL. Worse, he's a useful idiot.

Now read this furious takedown, which ends with this: "What’s next for the New York Times? A tribute to Benito Mussolini and running the trains on time as a fair exchange for personal and political liberty?"

Just so. There isn't a dictator on earth, alive or dead, that the Left will not embrace.

More commentary, with the delightful title of "Tom Friedman, for one, welcomes our new Chinese creditor overlords."

See this and this, which calls Friedman's piece what it is: "despicable."

The HopeChange Chronicles: Clinton to Beijing: "Hey, Human Rights Aren't A Priority."

Secretary of State Clinton's wrapping up her Asian tour.  So!  In the new era of HopeChange, did anything interesting happen?

Well, sure: she told Beijing that human rights in China aren't a priority.  Human rights groups such as Amnesty International are aghast, as they should be.  Here's a quotation:

"The United States is one of the only countries that can meaningfully stand up to China on human rights issues," said T. Kumar, the organization's advocacy director for Asia and the Pacific. "But by commenting that human rights will not interfere with other priorities, Secretary Clinton damages future U.S. initiatives to protect those rights in China."

The same news piece quotes Clinton herself:

"Now, that doesn't mean that questions of Taiwan, Tibet, human rights, the whole range of challenges that we often engage on with the Chinese, are not part of the agenda. But we pretty much know what they are going to say.

We have to continue to press them but our pressing on those issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crises. We have to have a dialog that leads to an understanding and cooperation on each of those."

What kind of rubbish is THAT?  "We pretty much know what they are going to say"???   We know what China's going to say about human rights and freedom issues, so we therefore don't push them?  So human rights" can't interfere" with other issues?  Hey, who cares about actual political prisoners rotting in Chinese prisons, Beijing's iron fist in Tibet, and its saber rattling toward democratic Taiwan when we have to worry about global warming?  Priorities, man.

HOPECHANGE!

Pffffft.

UPDATE 1:  More here.  (Xie-xie, La Parisienne!)

Quirky Asia Files: Some Pro-Tibet Flags Are Made in . . . China

I can't make this stuff up.

Oh, and there's more:

Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Tibet flags, media reports say.

The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning.

But then some of them saw TV images of protesters holding the emblem and they alerted the authorities, according to Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper.

Beijing Olympic Watch: France's Sarkozy and the Opening Ceremonies

Here is a little news, but my post is really about commentary.

France's leader Sarkozy has said that he has not ruled out the option of boycotting the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. (I had blogged briefly about this symbolic type of boycott, not a full, actual, and useless boycott, before.)

Sarko cites the situation in Tibet as his reason. He has also called on China to talk with the Dalai Lama.

Now observe more carefully the words in the BBC headline: "Sarkozy threat to Olympic opening."

Hmmmm. SARKO is the threat? Apparently the democratically elected leader of a free European nation is the "threat" when he wants to voice his opinion about a situation that has attracted the condemnation of numerous world leaders. Oh, the threat can't possibly be an autocratic dictatorship using bloody force in a location it has seized and deliberately subjected to cultural mutilation.

Look, I know that media standards these days are deplorable, but this sort of moral inversion is simply offensive and stupid. Of course, this is the BBC news service we're talking about. You'll remember that on my old blog I once ranted about how BBC described Taiwan as a "threat" to China.

Beijing Olympic Watch: Thoughts on Boycotting the Opening Ceremonies

In light of the brutal and bloody measures now underway in Tibet, some people are calling for a mini-boycott of the Beijing Olympics. This doesn't mean a boycott of the entire Games (that wouldn't do anything much anyway), but the refusal of international VIPs to attend the opening ceremonies might be a big slap to Beijing.

Well, it would certainly be a loss of face. Plus it would tell everyone -- IOC included -- that not everybody is comfortable with silently colluding with autocratic dictatorships that trample on human rights.

Anyway, 2008 was supposed to be Beijing's big year of self-promoting propaganda -- but so far, it's turned out to be a disaster. I'm thinking, you know, that's just FINE with me. Go ahead, let the world see the huge gap between the shiny happy images that Beijing wants people to see and the very different images that it's been producing lately -- even though it's been trying to block YouTube and other sources of video from Tibet.

Taiwan Criticizes China Over Tibet

See the latest on Taiwanese leaders' response to China's recent crackdown in Tibet.

Here's a quote from DPP leader Frank Hsieh: " "As we look at Tibet, we must think about our own fate."

Oh, my.