roof of the world

"China’s leaders claim to be modernizers and that they are leading the country towards greater freedom and democracy. Yet they still remain afraid of their own citizens and the healthy diversity of news and views which defines a modern society. " - Brad Adams, Asia Director of Human Rights Watch

A land in exile, cut cold and rugged dry, miles away from what we here in our Neo-Colonized world call home. There is a place that rests on a plateau. Past the dense fog, maybe a vaulted door, you’ll find yourself in the highest of mountain ranges, where international sports enthusiasts attempt a David versus Goliath showdown with world renowned Mount Everest. Adhering to the unforgiving influx of diverse tourists threatening globalization, the inhabitants also fight to remain distinctive to their own way of life that has developed over centuries of isolation and independence.

This is Tibet, located in Central China with a population of an estimated 6 million indigenous people. It is a place where religion plays a central role in the life of the Tibetan people. Each family home has customarily formed at least one Buddhist practitioner to join the religious order, to help keep their loyalties constant with their cultural heritage and religion even after the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had forced them into autonomous in the 1950’s.

Since then, Human rights violations in the People's Republic of China (PRC) remain systematically widespread and now dangerously all too common. The Chinese government continues to suppress dissenting opinions and maintains political control over the legal system, resulting in an arbitrary and sometimes abusive judicial regime. The lack of accountability of the government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) means that abuses by officials often go unchecked. The most common types of abuses include arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment of prisoners including citizens, severe restrictions on freedom of expression and association and violations specific to women.

Through the slippery mystique, there is paradox that revolves this part of me. Sometimes there are these instances that have this affect on you, they make you think different, or just think. One thing, about fundamentalism, of any kind, and how it troubles me is that the world is too big and too intricate to 'confirm' to our ideas of what it should be like. In experience, finding that most fundamentalists as in for example, Chinese President, Hu Jintao aren't so much attached to their professed ideologies as they are to the way in which these ideologies try to make sense of the confusing. We, like him, invent myths and theories to explain away the chaos in our lives even though we're still going through a world that's older and more complicated than we'll ever understand. So many religious, political, scientific and social systems fail in that they try to impose a rigid structure onto what is an inherently ambiguous world. Not that I’m suggesting that we stop trying to understand things in any of these areas. Trying to understand the world can be fun and, at times, helpful, as some choose to express themselves, especially for the benefit of everyone. But if we base our belief systems on the humble assumption that the complexities of the world are ontologically beyond our understanding, then maybe our belief systems will make more sense and end up causing us less suffering.

We all have a place, like those native to Tibet, whom have something or someone precious in our lives to hold onto yet how amazed I am as to how we’ve grown into something that says there is nothing here of worth, worth protecting. There is nothing worth defending with that impossible life, just a dereliction of duty in a sense that we must not break out of harms way to upset our forward notion that we’re moving somewhere other than anywhere else that is actually upwardly mobile. We tell ourselves, there is nothing worth saving in a place where the people who live traditionally without currencies save the frivolous necessities and while we’re standing around looking at all of this for the first time, maybe even for some us the last, we may all as well eat the key to the safe that we have forgotten.

I hope to provide you with enough information that will, in the very least, send the message home that there is plight on Tibet. And as we are the virtual community are in the space for a movement dedicated to ending the suffering of the Tibetan people. We may do our part in returning the right of self-determination to the Tibetan people. As a Canadian, let’s expect our government to ensure that its continuing discussions with China result in concrete improvements in the lives of the many Chinese citizens who continue to suffer such egregious abuses.

If you wish to send a message in your own words to the Prime Minster.

by email: martin.p@parl.gc.ca]
by fax: (613) 941-6900
or by ordinary mail [no postage required]:

The Right Honourable Paul Martin
Prime Minister of Canada
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A2


Acquired Resources:
Amnesty International - http://www.amnesty.ca
Tibet Online - http://www.tibetonline.com
Tibetan Government in Exile Official website - http://www.tibet.com/
Tibetan Centre for human rights and democracy – http://www.tchrd.org
Free Tibet Campaign - http://www.freetibet.org/index.html/