China's Repression of Tibet
The ancient Greek historian Thucydides said of conflicts between peoples, "The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must." Thucydides has been right for the past 2,400 years, and China's repression of Tibet sadly is no exception.
The Tibetan-Chinese history had periods when Tibet was independent, but also periods when Tibet and China accepted the sovereignty of Mongols and Manchus, although if that gives any country the right to claim sovereignty over Tibet today, it would be Mongolia instead of China.
When China took control of Tibet in 1950, it promised Tibetans autonomy, much like the autonomy of Hong Kong, but found Tibet too precious to keep that promise. Even though it is sparsely populated due to its high elevation, Tibet is larger than Western Europe, rich in minerals, including the rare uranium, and is the strategic source of many central Asian rivers.
Since then, China has been trampling on Tibetan culture, religion and people to extinguish the Tibetan society and turn Tibet into just another Chinese province. In the last 56 years, China has destroyed over 6,000 Tibetan temples, killed over a million Tibetans and chased many others into exile, while incentivizing Chinese to move to Tibet.
The sad reality is that it worked. Today, the 8 million Chinese in Tibet outnumber the 6 million Tibetans, who face poverty, unemployment and discrimination in their own homeland. Except for a few major temples kept to attract tourists, almost all other temples have been destroyed. No country recognizes Tibet's independence, and even the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader, concedes that he no longer is seeking independence for Tibet.
What he is still seeking now is the protection of the remaining Tibetan society, as he said in 2005: "We are willing to be part of the People's Republic of China, to have it govern and guarantee to preserve our Tibetan culture, spirituality and our environment." We echo his words as our request to China.
Relevant Links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpXd3lE5xy0
http://www.savetibet.org/news/newsitem.php?id=811
http://tibet.dharmakara.net/
http://www.tibet.org/
http://www.tibet.com/
http://www.freetibet.org/
http://www.friends-of-tibet.org.nz/occu.html
http://www.hrw.org/worldreport99/asia/china.html
http://actionnetwork.org/sft/alert-description.tcl?alert_id=3757952