Tibetans Rise Up Against Communist Rule

The Tibetan people are rebelling against Chinese rule and the world is silent. It seems that saving the Beijing Olympics is more important than saving an ancient people whose land and culture have been eviscerated by more than half a century of ethnic cleansing. The New York Times, which has always done its upmost to keep captive nations captive because their liberation might upset the peace between the democratic West and the totalitarian East, has gone so far as to portray the Tibetan freedom fighters as Chinese seditionists, when, in fact, they are nationalists fighting for the sovereignty of their country, invaded, occupied and illegally annexed by Red China in 1951.

The Times is reporting today that the demonstrators (or "rampaging mob," as it calls them) have "clashed with riot police in a second Chinese city." Chinese city? Have the Tibetans invaded some city in China? No, The Times apparently recognizes Tibet as a Chinese province, and when Tibetans rise against their country's Chinese occupiers in Tibet it reports that they have "clashed" with the Chinese in a Chinese city! When the protests began in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa (which The Times at least recognizes as Tibetan) the uprising there was characterized as a "deadly riot." Tibetans, led by Buddhist monks and flying their country's banned flag, take to the streets to fight for their freedom and their country's independence with only rocks and torches as weapons and The Times accuses them of perpetrating a "deadly riot," although the ones responsible for the carnage are those with the guns and the tanks. The Tibetans are supposedly to blame for causing the Chinese to kill them, as the victims of the Boston Massacre were responsible for instigating the wrath of the British, I suppose.

The Times is also reporting the official Chinese line that the Dalai Lama incited the uprising. The Dalai Lama is their Cuban embargo; he gets blamed for everything that doesn't go their way in Tibet. Of course it would be as foolish to eliminate the Dalai Lama to placate the Chinese as it would be to eliminate the trade embargo to placate Castro.

As Cubans we cannot witness the events in Tibet with indifference, nor without a great sense of foreboding. What if those were our countrymen facing down tanks with fists? What would be the world's reaction? How would The New York Times report it and all the media outlets that follow its lead? Consider this: Liberals actually like Tibetans. They admire the Dalai Lama and his religion of peace (which is a lot more militant and dignified than our religion of peace). But liberals admire Tibetans in their place, of course, which appears to be in a Shangri-La collage or menagerie, but not in an independent Tibet.


Unlike Tibetans, Cubans are not well-liked by the MSM; in fact, we are profoundly disliked. More than disliked even: we are as hated as the Tibetans are loved (although the effects of the media's love or hate are much the same, as we have seen). If the Cuban people rose against their tyrants, unarmed and alone, as some wish them to do who have nothing to lose by their annihilation, there may be those who might see it as a propitious moment to end their association with the Castro regime; but the media will never side with Castro's enemies and will not be moved even by mountains of dead bigger than the Pan.

Those really acquainted with the nature of the Castro regime know that it will suppress any mass public manifestation of dissent at least as ferociously as the Chinese and likely more so. Even with Tibet in flames, the Chinese Communists are still masters of China. Tibet is a Chinese colony, obviously worth taking and holding, but not destined to be the last stand of Chinese Communism. Cuba, of course, is the site of Castro & Company and only incidentally the habitation of 11 million Cubans. It can only remain Castro's or revert to the Cuban people.

If the Cuban Communists were faced with an open revolt they would react to it with the closest approximation to a nuclear holocaust which they could manage; they would lay waste to the entire country (or the little they have not already levelled), cast it literally in darkness, cut off food and water, spread pandemics and desolation, and if they could sink the island itself into the ocean, as Castro once promised, they would do it rather than relinquish control of it. Let us never fool ourselves about the nature of our enemy. The Cuban people on the island don't. They know what they are up against and they struggle every day against it, but they know better than us, because they are there and we are not, the limits of the possible. We must not vent our frustration on their bodies but be patient till the hour of redemption comes as come it must. Again, we cannot know that hour because we are not in that place, nor can we schedule revolutions and expect others to do the dying.

Nevertheless, the example of the Tibetans is inspiring. We will not demean their sacrifice by predicting the outcome of their struggle while they are still battling in the streets. Nothing do we desire more truly than their victory. But whatever the outcome there are important lessons in their struggle for Cubans to assimilate both here and on the island.