Olympic torch lights up Tibetan cause

Taken by the Dalai Lama

I have been thinking about a comment that Roosevelt the blog-owner of MoThanSkin left on my blog titled Snuff out that Olympic torch already.

“I agree with you, Akin, the Olympics have become much too politicized. But the truth of the matter is no nation is without some degree of human rights violations, America included!

The Dalai Lama and his Tibet government-in-exile is misleading the Free World as to his true objectives, which is to have the Peoples Republic of China give back to him and his fellow monks the centuries old feudalistic rule of the Dalai Lamas over the Tibetan people!

The Dalai Lama is not what he appears to be! To have the Dalai Lama rule over Tibet is not freedom or democracy! China is being unfairly judged by the Free World when it comes to Tibet, in my opinion!”

Somewhere in between

I am not too sure that I subscribe entirely to the view of the Dalai Lama being the covert instigator of unrest in Tibet much I do not believe that China has much to offer Tibet apart from the suppression of their culture and the emasculation of the people.

Probably, the truth is somewhere in between, the fact that Tibetans are religious people who have allegiance towards the Dalai Lama and the other fact that China invaded and forcefully occupied from 1950.

There is no doubt that Tibet has had a vibrant, turbulent and in some ways violent past, but they are still a people with an identity and a yearning for a form of nationhood.

A determined China

An article on Reuters.com opines that China has trouble reading Tibet’s pulse, Tibetans still revere their god-king in the person of the Dalai Lama where the Chinese had expected them to revile their former rulers to whom they were in obeisance in feudal serfdom.

The journey of the Olympic torch around the world has given the focus to human rights issues in China rather than the harmony of global sport in the spirit of the Olympics, once docile administrators and custodians of the tarnished Olympic brand have now had to speak up.

In some cases, the dogged determination of China to continue the torch relay regardless and their forceful desire to defile Mount Everest and run the torch through Tibet almost makes it appear as if they are impervious to any criticism.

Naivety par excellence

In the end, if China really thought they could pull off the Olympics with scant regard to all other issues on the basis of taking politics out of the Olympics and sport in general, they have displayed a level of amazing arrogance and sheer ignorance being propped up by the hubris of might and untrammelled remit to mess people up big-time within China – surely, feelings would have been aroused in an Olympic year and they have not been so politically astute but outrageously naïve to the extreme, it beggars belief.

If at the end of the day the Dalai Lama is the secret puppet master behind all this unrest around aspirations of Tibet, well, there could not have been a better occasion to get maximum publicity for Tibetan issues than at this time, for which I can only commend him for the genius of timing and execution.

As to where I standard on this matter, it would appear the Tibetans need neither a communist state nor a Western democracy over them, rather they want the Dalai Lama as their leader.

Before we get all funny about this, the Vatican is both religious and political with the head of both structures being the Pope – why should Tibet be different, feudal or not?