Cheers! Cheers!

Watch the report on Chinese TV

Tibet. Everybody is talking about Tibet, that's why I also want to join them, I want to explain it all, but how can I?

Background: Tibet has been progressively and illegally invaded by the Chinese Maoist troops since 1949. The result of that invasion is a trail of blood and pain that, from a distance of more than fifty years, I have no fear of summarizing in the word 'ethnocide'.

The facts and figures (unfortunately not verifiable) reported by pro-Tibet movements are the following:
- Over a million dead
- 130,000 refugees (especially in India and Nepal)
- 6,000 monasteries destroyed
- Thousands of Tibetans imprisoned for political crimes
- Progressive destruction of traditional environment in favour of wild industrialization
- Massive militarization
- Forced cultural assimilation
View: http://www.comunitatibetana.org/it/uno-sguardo-sul-tibet.pdf (in Italian)

All true, or partly true, that may be, it's all really disgusting and I would smash all the windows of the Chinese shops as well. But ...
... before the Chinese invasion the independent Tibet was a theocratic monarchy (today the latest example, I think, is the Vatican) and was among the poorest and least developed countries of the world, yet anchored to a feudal system of exploitation. The caste of monks lived thanks to the hard working of the population, which was generally illiterate, poor and subject to a difficult life.
Tibet was not, as we believe, a peaceful state nor a pacifist one; it had its own army (although badly equipped in 1949, but still an army) and had a considerable military history, comprising wars, invasions, conquests, defeats, treaties, occupations and so on.
China, like every colonial country, claims the construction in Tibet of infrastructure, hospitals, schools, modern houses, as well as the improvement of the standard life conditions of the average Tibetan and their emancipation from the serfdom.

I personally would prefer to live free in misery rather than subdued in peace. But writing on a computer is easy, then I go to the kitchen to eat tiramisù. I do not know how many Tibetans feel like me. Those that today are risking their lives on the streets of Lhasa, would certainly agree with me.

The Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize winner, spiritual leader of Tibet and head of the Tibetan government in exile, is a great philosopher of nonviolence and, in general, an exceptional person. Reading one of his books is an enlightening experience. Many agree that his high standard of living and his force of propaganda are due to funding of the American CIA.

Epilogue.
I am the kind of athlete, who watches sport on TV, and I would certainly not go to celebrate the 'Olympic spirit' in the politically-oppressed China, the China of the 5,000 death sentences every year, but I would not even go to Morocco, where 2,500 kms of wall were built against the Saharawis, to Russia with its Chechen war, to the United States with their Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, to Burma, Cuba, Vietnam, Sudan, Uzbekistan, even not to France with its legion in Chad and the privatization of water, and perhaps even not to Italy with its Bolzaneto and Savignano Irpino, because, even in our country, human rights are not "roses and flowers".
But to be honest, if I were a professional athlete having only ten years to achieve all that I have worked for, and the Olympics were the opportunity of a lifetime, perhaps I too would go to compete in Beijing and would leave human rights to the politicians, who condemn and get upset but finally forge trade agreements singing from La Traviata: "Libiamo! Libiamo - Cheers! Cheers!"

Bruno Picozzi (in translation)