What I found to be very interesting is how the Dalai Lama managed to maintain the same discourse over all the years that have passed since he had to be displaced for security concerns. The Dalai Lama is an advocate of non-violence; he’s been taking this approach in his discourses to devotees and leaders around the world meanwhile denouncing the occupation of Tibet for ages.

Time proved him right today as the media conjecture is different.

The Chinese C.P. line was always to discredit the Dalai Lama and accuse him of fueling protests in Tibet in order to justify (more internally than today) its actions. Today the C.P. has to defend its response to recent protests to the international community since all eyes are riveted on Beijing and Lhasa. The C.P. can do nothing less than to keep up with its Party line and claims today again that the Dalai Lama is fueling violent protests in Tibet. But everybody heard the Dalai Lama speak overtly of non-violence once more and no one can credibly believe the C.P. line. You either turn a blind-eye to it all or take the side of Tibetans in this paradigm.

As protests around the world erupt when the Olympic torch is lit in Athens, in Kathmandu, in Daram Sala, etc. (more to come), the brutal response of the local authorities in all these places further discredit the state machinery. I would like to conclude with some tacky word like “Peoples of the World, unite!” Rather, this brings me to a second comment: what next?

Well, while what happens now was all too predictable (all conditions were united: the media awareness, the games/context, the economic rise of China, the space capacity of China, and the increasing geopolitical strategic importance of China that follows) the future is not. Will countries like the USA, France, UK, Germany, India, or Japan boycott the games? Perhaps not. If they did, what would be the consequence? How does it matter to China that its repute is sinking deeper? Will foreign business allies do anything about it? Will consumers around the world negate the common rationale behind their purchasing choices ands pay more because they disapprove C.P.’s conduct? I doubt it.

The politics of Burma and Nepal inform my concerns about the potential autonomy that a “Free Tibet” would enjoy tomorrow. “Free Tibet” doesn’t exist solely in utopia for that reason: it once was and it could well be again. But for that to happen, bread and butter matters.

1. Peoples will have to break with the usual rationale behind purchase of goods and services.
2. Peoples will have to put pressure on their governments so they change (or bend) the rules of international trade in order to factor into their trade agreements human rights concerns.
3. Peoples will have to buy goods and services from Tibet at a fair price to sustain Tibetan economy and the livelihood of its people.
4. And more importantly, peoples will have to assess and address the inequities and the violence going on within their own countries.

But as long as in democracies like Canada (were the elites welcome the Dalai Lama with warm looks in their eyes and hearty handshakes for the camera all the while refusing to ratify the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) the people continue to give a license to the elites to act on their behalf and then turn a blind-eye to politics once the polls are emptied, nothing is going to change. All the talk about Tibet today is sweet but has a bitterly taste because of the hypocrisy it is infused with.