Socialist Alliance: Let the Tibetans decide their future
By Dick Nichols
April 26, 2008 -- The protests and arrests in Lhasa and the
demonstrations and counter-demonstrations around the Olympic torch
relay has re-focused the world on the plight of Tibetans. This has, in
turn, sparked a debate on the left about whether the Tibetan struggle
is a just one, or not what it seems. The Socialist Alliance national
executive decided at its April meeting that the right to self-
determination applies as much to the Tibetans as to any other people.
It=92s not for others to decide according to some private benchmark of
oppression whether or not the Tibetans are =93really=94 oppressed.
Obviously, the protests in Lhasa and other centres reflect deep
feelings of discrimination and alienation: these things cannot be
manufactured.
In this context it is irrelevant that some in the West, especially
high-profile Hollywood followers of the Dalai Lama, believe in the
weird delusion that old theocratic Tibet was a Shangri-la that was
cruelly destroyed by the =93Chinese communist dictator****p=94. The fact
that the Tibetan resistance army up until 1959 was funded and trained
by the CIA is also irrelevant.
Full article at http://www.links.org.au/node/377
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