http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/01/asia/letter.php
Headline:
A step forward? Chinese media re****t a single Tibetan death
By Howard W. French Published: May 1, 2008
SHANGHAI: A milestone of sorts was reached on Wednesday with the
re****ting in China's carefully controlled media of the death of a
Tibetan in a clash with Chinese security forces.
Estimates by Tibetan advocacy groups and international human rights
groups of the numbers of Tibetan dead have ranged from scores of
victims to the hundreds.
Remarkably, though, this was the very first such re****t of a Tibetan
death since the outbreak in early March of demonstrations by Tibetans
in their "autonomous region" and in the surrounding provinces where
Tibetans live in large numbers.
A rolling thunder of nationalist anger has swept China in recent
weeks, as Chinese have seethed over the demonstrations that have
greeted the Olympic torch on its circuit around the world.
Given little context for understanding why foreigners should be moved
to demonstrate in the first place, Chinese counterprotesters and
countless voices in the media and on the Internet have reduced the
entire matter to the realms of prejudice and anti-Chinese sentiment.
This effort has been advanced tremendously by the prominent use of a
quote by the ever-gruff CNN commentator Jack Cafferty. Speaking about
China at the time of the San Francisco leg of the torch relay,
Cafferty described the Chinese as "basically the same bunch of goons
and thugs they've been for the last 50 years."
Amid the predictable uproar, Cafferty issued a clarification saying
that his comments were aimed at the Chinese government and not the
people, but this has made little impression here, particularly among
the campaigners for whom the original quote, without that context, was
simply too good to let go of.
Many Americans will still be unaware of what Cafferty said, while few
Chinese who follow the news could have missed it. Americans are used
to sharing jaundiced views of politicians. One of the more venerable
expressions in the political culture, after all, is "throw the bums
out," meaning to vote despised politicians out of office. Chinese, of
course, have no such option.
The heavy amplification of Cafferty's words here and the belated
admission of a Tibetan death, albeit a single death ascribed to a
gunfight, however, share more than a purely coincidental association.
They form part of a much larger phenomenon acknowledged by Chinese
journalists who work within the system: an information war being waged
to channel opinion and nationalist sentiment in this country.
Earlier this month, an editor from a Beijing newspaper told The South
China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, of a notice circulated by
the Chinese Communist Party calling for an "unprecedented, ferocious
media war against the biased Western press."
Another editor, who confirmed the directive, said in an interview this
week: The Cafferty incident "is being used to demonize the Western
media, reducing their credibility here. It's a good op****tunity for
the official media and for the Communist Party."
As "wars" go, this is one that relies on a particular asymmetry that
depends upon keeping people here in the dark about all sorts of
details. The public asks "why is the West brandi****ng Tibet to
demonstrate against us" because it genuinely has little information
about events, whether recent or more distant in that part of their
country, save for a carefully pruned and officially sanctioned story
line. While the Western media are accused of bias for supposedly
giving short shrift to violence committed by rioting Tibetans in Lhasa
on March 14, there is no mention in the Chinese media, not even at the
level of allegations, of the deaths of numerous Tibetans in the
ensuing crackdown. Tibet, meanwhile, has been closed to outsiders,
enhancing the asymmetry.
Recent Chinese press accounts have endlessly reminded the public of
Beijing's beneficence in ending "slavery" in Tibet and lifting
Tibetans out of dire poverty since then. There has been no mention of
the cultural, religious or environmental costs involved or almost
anything else as seen from the perspective of Tibetans, many of whom
fear forced assimilation and the destruction of their religion.
Tibetans in Lhasa and elsewhere re****t that their homes have been
invaded by security forces searching for images of the Dalai Lama, the
exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. At monasteries and temples all over
western China, "re-education campaigns" have begun to force monks and
others to recite the official line on Tibet, that the province has
essentially always been part of China, and to renounce the Dalai Lama
as a villainous "splittist."
The re-education drive is uncomfortably reminiscent of fumie, a
practice in Japan's 16th century campaign against Christians, in which
those who were suspected as believers were forced to trample on images
of Jesus. ...(cont)
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