[Buddha-l] China Tibet

[Dan Lusthaus]

from nyt:

November 9, 2012
Many Chinese Intellectuals Are Silent Amid a Wave of Tibetan 
Self-Immolations
By ANDREW JACOBS
BEIJING - In a gruesome act of resistance that has played out dozens of 
times in recent months, six young Tibetans set fire to themselves this week, 
shouting demands for freedom as they were consumed by flames. On Friday, for 
the second day in a row, thousands of Tibetans took to the streets in the 
northwestern Chinese province of Qinghai denouncing "cultural genocide" and 
demanding an end to heavy-handed police tactics, exile groups said.

Here in the nation's capital, where Communist Party power brokers are 
presenting a new generation of leaders, the outgoing president, Hu Jintao, 
made no mention on Thursday of the anger consuming China's discontented 
borderlands during his sprawling address to the nation.

Asked by foreign reporters about the escalating crisis, delegates to the 
18th Party Congress blamed the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader, or 
inelegantly dodged the question altogether. "Can I not answer that?" one 
asked nervously.

But while Tibetan rights advocates have long been inured to impassive 
officials, they are increasingly troubled by the deafening silence among 
Chinese intellectuals and the liberal online commentariat, a group usually 
eager to call out injustice despite the perils of bucking China's 
authoritarian strictures.

On Twitter, where China's most voluble critics find refuge from government 
censors, the topic is often buried by posts about official corruption, 
illegal land grabs or other scandals of the day. Since the self-immolations 
began in earnest last year, few Chinese scholars have attempted to grapple 
with the subject.

"The apathy is appalling," said Zhang Boshu, a political philosopher who 
lost his job at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences three years ago for 
criticizing the government's human rights record.

With a mounting toll of 69 self-immolations, at least 56 of them fatal, many 
Tibetans are asking themselves why their Han Chinese brethren seem unmoved 
by the suffering - or are at least uninterested in exploring why so many 
people have embraced such a horrifying means of protest...



See the rest, with some photos at


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/world/asia/educated-chinese-are-silent-amid-tibetan-self-immolations.htm

Dan