TRUTH IN STRANGE PLACES

Nominated for the TISP award this month is George W. Bush, who called on the Chinese to “exercise restraint” in Tibet and meet with HH the Dalai Lama to discuss Tibetan autonomy within China.  The story below alleges that the current unrest in Tibet has been stirred up by the CIA to embarass China on the eve of the Olympics.  While that may not be true, it is pretty certain that the CIA funded the Tibetan resistance for 20 years, not out of any great love for Buddhism and Tibetan culture, but simply to harass the Commies.  Officially, that aid ended in 1974, but unofficially, who knows?  Then again, claims that HHDL has “closely co-operated” with the CIA for 50 years may be greatly exaggerated….I’d like to hear the Tibetan side of the story, as the Asia Times definitely slants towards China….hey, if you’re a small country that’s been overrun by a much larger one and you’re largely getting ignored, you take help where you can get it…

It is certainly peculiar to have GWB and the CIA on my side in a dispute.  Just goes to show that the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, eh?

Tibet, the ‘great game’ and the CIA
By Richard M Bennett

Given the historical context of the unrest in Tibet, there is reason to believe Beijing was caught on the hop with the recent demonstrations for the simple reason that their planning took place outside of Tibet and that the direction of the protesters is similarly in the hands of anti-Chinese organizers safely out of reach in Nepal and northern India.

Similarly, the funding and overall control of the unrest has also been linked to Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, and by inference to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) because of his close cooperation with US intelligence for over 50 years.

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and this piece suggests that China’s policy of waiting ’till HHDL dies so they don’t have to deal with the Tibet issue may backfire on them:

Cracks emerge in ‘Dalai Lama clique’
By Law Siu-lan

The symbolic Olympic flame for the 2008 Beijing Summer Games, lit in Athens on March 24, arrived in Beijing on March 31. The traditional torch relay will soon travel to the rooftop of the world – Mount Everest – and Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, where anti-China protests by Tibetans took place early last month.

China has accused the “Dalai Lama clique” of attempting to sabotage the Olympic torch relay. The Dalai Lama immediately dismissed the charge. As a matter of fact, Tibetans in exile have split into various factions, and there are allegedly segments of radical youths that are plotting to sabotage the Beijing Olympics. Beijing, however, indiscriminately categorizes them all as under the “Dalai clique”, a classification that could only lead Beijing into misjudgments. 

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