We all know Tibet is high priority on the news recently. After 50 years of torment the people are finally trying to lash out at their abusers. Seeing news reports doesn't really hit a hard enough message though. Broadcasters can only get their hands on censored material and so the impact of a negative story involving China is always subtly mellowed out.
I watched the Channel Four Dispatches program about a Tibetan exile going back into Tibet as an undercover reporter for 3 months. This program really brought out the reality of what has been going on for decades to a completely harmless group of people.
The young Tibetan was incredibly brave to carry out such an operation, at one point he was physically sick with worry, but continued taking massive risks to broadcast his story of Tibetan life. It is clear that there are absolutely no human rights for Tibetans at all, they are treated like vermin by the Chinese. Many of the camera shots of Chinese police lounging around cafes and standing for no good reason in streets and town squares reminded me so much of Nazi German officers during World War 2. They arrest Tibetans for no real reasons and torture them for years, imprison them for years, even randomly execute them.
Chinese road blocks are everywhere, even on the remotest mud road! Dispatches implied that there are as many as 250,000 Chinese secret police and troops controlling 5 million Tibetans. The secret interviews with displaced Tibetans living in virtual prison camps, longing for their old life of green pastures and livestock, just sickened me. You can go on and on about the real horrors of Tibet, to me it is absolutely no different to the Final Solution imposed on the Jewish. In human terms, Chinese rule over Tibet is probably worse, because this has gone on for more than 2 generations unchallenged by the world.
The young Tibetan exile managed to complete his mission and flew back to the UK unscathed. On the conclusion of his story, i decided there and then that i was not going to buy any more goods that are made in China. Every time i pick up a pair of trainers or a gadget and it says Made in China, i will put it back on the shelf in disgust. If 10% of the World did the same, it would probably snuff out all of Chinas economic growth for the next few years. I will regard all goods Made in China as trash. I consider it trash, whether it is a Top Label or a fake good, if it is Made in China it hasn't been produced fairly or morally. Tibetans are used as slave labour for making rubbish toys sold to the west. How can anyone think this is the right thing to do and just go ahead and buy that product because its cheaper. Of course its going to be cheaper, they conscripted some poor sod to make it for nothing with no respect to his or her welfare.
China is doing the same thing Japan was doing in Manchuria 70 years ago, asset and resource stripping the country and making its subjects prisoners in their own country. Surely, they know it is an unacceptable foreign policy, being on the wrong end of it in recent history. I cannot see the USA or the British governments making any more noise than they currently are. It seems our governments are powerless to stop the Chinese from doing what they like to Tibet, their nagging disregard for Taiwan and their disruptive influences in North Korea. If our governments are powerless then it is up to ordinary people to use their wealth more selectively and filter out Chinese goods from their shopping lists. Maybe the worlds spending power can influence Chinese foreign policy? As for the Olympics, i lost all interest in that event too now.