Happenings in Tibet

A comment from Dee in Adelaide on my post from last year when we met His Holiness in Dharamsala after our Trek for Tibet has reminded me of my poor neglected blog.

The recent events in Tibet are tragic, but totally understandable - if Tibetans don't act now when the eyes of all the world are on China, when will they have a chance again to get such wonderful publicity for their cause? And for the Chinese, if they allow unrest in Tibet to go unpunished, it will open the hugest can of worms for them. The authorities there seem terrified that large scale unrest could break out at any time, and therefore any hint of it must be ruthlessly put down.

And of course that is consistent with China's history; it was only when the ruling dynasty became weak and corrupt that the people were able to rise up and throw off their shackles. The Party apparatchiks know their history, and that history inevitably repeats itself - but how long will it take before the people are so fed up that they will risk everything to overthrow the government? Realistically it will only be when the Party loses the confidence of the armed forces that real change is likely to take place, but what could trigger such a change?

In this context, check out this article from The Statesman - I'm not sure of the credibility of the source, but it makes interesting reading.