Asia Blog: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam

The Onion probably has the most entertaining and reasonable look at the whole Tibet / China situation going on right now with Olympic Torch Used To Ignite Tibetan Protesters:

BEIJING—A universally recognized symbol of goodwill, the Olympic torch was used to immolate hundreds of Tibetan protesters during its journey across mainland China last week, in what is being called a stirring display of competitive spirit and Chinese nationalism.

Given all of the things in the mix–Tibetans rioting, the Chinese army shooting Tibetans, various protests, the Olympic torch-snuffing, heat from the Dali Lama, the Chinese government photoshopping photos–what needs to happen is for people to step back, calm down, and go about their normal lives. Here, and in Tibet and China. That way we’ll have a lot less political mess, death, and suffering in the eastern parts of the world.

This just seems like the wrong thing to do. Our favorite Sinablog Shanghaiist has the scoop about how Iceland’s famous singer embarrassed herself:

Björk closed out the set with the anthemic ‘Declare Independence,’ chanting the name of a huge piece of real estate west of Sichuan and Yunnan amongst a hail of streamers. [Bjork] shouted “Tibet, Tibet!” followed by “Raise your flag!” towards the end of her final song, “Declare independence.”

Today is the UN’s landmine awareness day. If you don’t know what a land mine is, read the Wikipedia article. The problem is that numerous 3rd world countries have their ground heavily seeded with the things during times of war, which just persist to the current day. Last year ~20,000 people died to land mines. I don’t know if that number includes soldiers.

Creating machines to automatically detect and defuse land mine fields isn’t a hard problem, but just an expensive one.  And, as land mines continue to be used around the world, the problem will persist indefinitely.  We need to be aware of the dangers of landmines and stop making them.  Perhaps if the supply atrophies they will disappear entirely.

Sometimes the most interesting news is the worst kind of news.

As you know, in 1951 the People’s Republic of China asserted control over Tibet, forcing them to sign a 17-point agreement. Before that, Tibet existed as a sovereign nation. However, Tibetan exiles say that 1.2 million people have died as a direct result of the “Great Leap Forward,” which China denies. Living conditions in Tibet are also considered substandard as a result of Chinese rule.

Yesterday, Boing Boing collected a series of stories detailing how Tibetan refugees were shot crossing the border. Stranger yet is that China admits that the PLA killed some of the refugees:

China admitted that its soldiers killed a person who was trying to flee Tibet, but the official account contradicted eyewitness reports that the troops had shot at unarmed refugees. The state-run Xinhua news agency released a short report of the September 30 incident that occurred near Mt Everest, saying soldiers had found nearly 70 people trying to illegally cross the Tibetan border into Nepal.

Interestingly enough, there is actually video footage of the atrocity:

The video footage, taken by a Romanian cameraman who was at advance base camp on Mount Cho Oyo at the time, depicts a line of Tibetans walking uphill through the snow on the Nangpa Pass when a shot is heard and one of the figures falls to the ground. The video clearly depicts that the Tibetans had their backs to the soldiers, were unarmed, and offered no resistance. The nun who died, Kelsang Namtso, appears to have been shot in the back.

I have no idea what can be done about this, but given China’s poor human rights record, this will just keep on happening. It’s the classic Machiavellian state–do what you need to to browbeat the people, assert power, and silence dissidents.

If you’ve ever felt the US is still racist and hypocritical about allowing non-Americans into the country, and then mistreating them when they get here, you definitely want to read Peter Bagge’s latest strip:

“Starting 500 years ago, waves of Western European immigrants began arriving in North America without Visas or Green Cards, killing, infecting, and stealing from the native population.”