Free Tibet!

FREE TIBET!

In response to your request for articles for posting, I will send you shortly an article if written in my newspaper, UP FRONT News ("The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold.") about an issue that I feel strongly is under-reported in the black media, i.e. the ongoing racist Genocide in Occupied Tibet.

Much of the political world, and in particular that which refers to itself as "left" and/or "progressive", perhaps still swayed by Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong's Marxist, populist, anti-imperialist rhetoric, simply continue to ignore the fact that the very imperialist Chinese invasion of independent Tibet in 1950 was the beginning of what has been a imposition of a thoroughly racist occupation which has led to the deaths of over 1 million Tibetans and the exile of hundreds of thousands more.

It is apparent that most Americans, regardless of political ideology remain unaware that 1.) before the Chinese invasion of 1950 Tibet was an independent nation and 2.) the dark-complexioned Tibetan people are completely ethnically, linguistically, and culturally distinct from their light-complexioned oppressors. In fact, relatively speaking, the Tibetans are" black people."

Indeed in many cases it's not so "relative" inasmuch as I've seen photographs of Tibetan nomads who spent long periods of time (praying) in the Himalayan sun, who are almost as black as charcoal.

In fact Mao had a deep hatred of the Tibetans, in part because of their deep religiosity (which explained the systematic destruction of many Tibetan temples the took place as the Chinese military took over Tibet). Mao and his expansionist Communist Party allied regarded the Tibetans as inferior and in need of Chinese-style modernization, a racist attitude not unlike Hitler's view of non-German Europeans.

A probably not very widely read Chinese military document is illustrative. In March, 1959 as the Chinese were completing their conquest of Tibet (a nation led by a pacifist Dalai Lama, so it wasn't a fair fight) there was a monk-lead uprising in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, which was brutally crushed by the Chinese military at a cost of many thousands of Tibetan lives.

One day a Tibetan exile living in New York City showed me a Chinese military booklet that discussed the rebellion and its suppression. It referred to the estimated 70,000 Tibetans killed as "insects."

Pro-Communist China apologists (e.g. the Revolutionary Communist Party, the Workers World Party) falsely allege that the Dalai Lama is a "CIA agent." That would have made the French underground fighters against the Nazi's the equivalent as there is no question and anti-Nazi fighters got assistance from the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA. In if in fact the Dalai Lama, receiving no assistance from the world's democracies as he tried to save his country's independence, accepted support from the CIA, how could one blame him?

There is an enormous amount of information (a good deal of which I have and have written and spoken about publicly about the de facto Genocide that continues in Tibet and the fact that the United States is in fact aiding and abetting the destruction of what may be one of the oldest cultures on the earth. Why is the world's purported greatest democracy turning a blind eye to the destruction of Tibet? Profits. "Communist" China is the perhaps the profiteering capital of the world, intimately connected with the multinationals based here and in other capitalist powers.

As far as I am aware, relatively few African-Americans have spoken out on this issue. There are a number of reasons for this, such as the fact that the relatively small U.S.-based Tibetan diaspora (small compared with, say, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Italian-Americans-Irish-Americans) tend to be less than publicly demonstrative about the situation in their occupied nations. (There is however an annual increase in Tibetan demonstrations on March 10, the anniversary of the aforementioned revolt and its suppression. There were also "Free Tibet" demonstrations around the world protesting the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

In fact a New York City Council resolution originally proposed by me and introduced by then City Councilman (now State Senator) Tony Avella (D.-Queens), which called for the removal of the 2008 Olympics from China because of the Tibet Genocide) was suffocated by Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a "leader" not known for her
sensitivity to the black agenda (e.g. the Sonny Carson street name change issue) who is notoriously considerate of mega-corporate power (e.g. the cartel known as the China Lobby).

In fact I do not believe that the activist "free Tibet" community, at least here in New York, has reached out sufficiently to African-
Americans, who certainly know what it is to struggle against oppression and racism. Indeed I've discussed this reality with a number of Tibetan activists, some of whom are personally acquainted with the Dalai Lama (who, as you know, like Dr. Martin Luther King, is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.)

I've also discussed this issue with a number of African-American leaders including in particular my pastor, Rev. Dr. Demetrius S. Carolina, Sr., of the First Central Baptist Church in Staten Island. Indeed, as a consequence he has not only referred to the Genocide in Tibet in one of his sermons but also issued a brief and eloquent statement in which he urge the government of China to, "Afford the Tibetan people what is rightfully theirs: independence and freedom to control their own destiny and place in the world today!"


Whether he knows it or not (yet) President Obama, by making the categorically false statement that "Tibet is part of China", has made the Genocide in Tibet a campaign issue starting immediately. If he really believes that, all those history courses he took at those fine Ivy league schools need recalibrate their Asian history curricula. If he knows that statement to be false, he is simply bowing to the might of the China Lobby.

In any event, the only morally defensible position for Obama to take is to (as he has in the case of Palestine and Kosovo) recognize Tibet as a free country - and then to whether the inevitable tantrum in Beijing.

I will forward to you (probably tomorrow, as the internet cafe I am using is about to close for the day) a copy of my UP FRONT News article, "Tibet Is a Nation, The Tibetans Are Not Chinese, Therefore Free Tibet."
-- Tom Weiss