It's been a while
...but I feel very moved to blog. I have not had the desire in quite a while I guess because life had settled into just being life. Perhaps it's another phase of the culture adjustment thing. Not much of great note had happened (oh yeah, we had a baby) and I didn't really have much new stuff to blog about.
But I felt the need to comment on the recent unrest in a country that shall remain un-named, but that wants independence from another country which shall also remain nameless but which has the biggest population in the world.
We have had numerous experiences of having our news blocked here from time to time, maybe a few times a month. Like the time a certain spiritual leader who wears orange robes was given an award by the President of the US. We'll be watching TV and suddenly the screen will just go black for a few minutes. But in the past few days, the news blackouts have become a many times a day occurrence. Almost every news bulletin will begin blacked out because 'the T*bet story' is usually the lead story. Any time orange robes man comes on to speak, forget about it. It's making me so angry and making us both seriously question (not for the first time) why we are here. I've never had my right to freedom of information taken away from me before, and even though I can get the information from other sources (some news internet sites are still accessible) I feel indignant that a government should decide what I can and can't watch. But am I a hypocrite for being here in the first place? We are hearing reports of calls to boycott the summer games because attendance supposedly makes you compliant in the denial of human rights of a so called c*mmunist government. Does living here make us culprits? I'm angry and torn. The official CCTV (english language propaganda TV station) line is that the orange robes guy has incited all the violence in T*bet and that only 10 innocent civilians were 'accidently' killed by fires lit by nasty and evil T*betan separatists. Also that the Ch*nese army has shown 'great restraint' in it's dealings with rounding up protesters by force. Foreign news agencies have also been denied entry into the area and all tourists are being kicked out....so that nobody sees what comes next? I'm scared for these people. There was an 'amnesty' deadline where people were encouraged to come forward and 'own up' of they had been involved in protests and also to 'dob' their friends in. In exchange they would be 'dealt with leniently'. Yeah right.
posted by nancyshack @ 8:26 pm
1 Comments:
Hi Petal,
I don't know a great deal about what is happening except for the basics because I find it all a tad overwhelming and therefore choose to 'emu' myself from it.....but...I did hear on talk-back radio that one caller was suggesting that the games should be taken away from C and the host said something along the lines of "everyone knows about C and they all knew about them before they were given the games so this shouldn't make much difference, it was perhaps just a bad call in the first place".
What peve's me is the arrogance, they seem to fool the people to thinking that they are mightier than thou and yet the atrosities carried out are shocking.
Do the people not know that they are being controlled or do they just not care? Perhaps that is why you whities get stared at all the time and maybe why so many of them are here.
I must say that I have wondered from time to time why you are there. I don't think that you are a hipocrit but the politics of C seem to upset you continuously, so I am a little perplexed as to why you stay. Why would you want to be in a place that sees you as a threat because you want to have an opinion and speak your mind?
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