While it seems retro, even dangerously so, to bash the People’s Republic of China these days (realpolitik meets anti-conservatism meets Big Business), and while the movement to “free Tibet” is almost certainly doomed to failure (moral suasion being singularly ineffective with the Beijing government, and the West being singularly uninterested in rocking the economic boat) … there’s still plenty to bash the PRC about. Including this
little recent episode:
A group of ethnic Tibetans trying to flee Tibet were shot dead by Chinese troops on September 30, at a Himalayan pass near the border of China and Nepal (Tibet is an “autonomous region” of China, having been taken over by the PRC in the 1950s). Reports are emerging that Communist party officials have attempted to silence witnesses, including Western trekkers who were in the area when the killing occurred.
[…] When I traveled to this region earlier this year, I heard personal accounts of incidents like this from Tibetans who crossed the border to refugee camps in India. If their stories are to be believed, what is remarkable about this incident is not that it occurred, but that it receiving any attention in the West at all.