Beijing's Looking Kinda Iffy This Summer!
The Olympics start in a few months and most athletes are consumed with making the U.S. team.
Some fortunate athletes are working on getting time off of their jobs and figuring out how to keep bills paid while they continue to train and are gone to the games.
Then you have the athletes who really want their families together with them, so getting up the money for four airline tickets to China is another challenge. So with all this going on, I ask, who's job is it to be worried about China putting Tibet on military lock down? Who should be concerned that bullets being fired at protestors in Bejing, don't hit U.S. athletes.
There are some scary things at work in China. Let's not be fooled, human rights are not a piroity in China. Humkan rights don't even make it in the "top ten" Chinese governmment concerns. But alarmingly human rights is a priority to the people of China and come the first Olympic day they know the world will be watching. Take a look at yesterdays lockdown in Tibet where a soldier was killed and China has imposed a lockdown across an ethnic-Tibet area a day after anti-Chinese protesters killed a policeman and the paramilitary responded with gunfire.Police and paramilitary were patrolling the streets of Luhuo, in southwestern Sichuan province, and had placed checkpoints on all roads in the mountainous district to prevent anyone from leaving or entering, according to local officials and residents.
The renewal of unrest last week among China's Tibetan population underscores the difficulty Beijing faces in calming down a people who yearn for the return of the Dalai Lama and chafe at some of the restrictions of Chinese rule. China had said that the turmoil, which it blamed on a small number of extremists loyal to the Dalai Lama, had now faded.
However, state media said a mob hurling stones and carrying knives killed Wang Guochuan. a paramilitary officer, yesterday afternoon. Several were wounded in the clash before police opened fire to end the disturbance. The Xinhua news agency said: “The police were forced to fire warning shots and dispersed the lawless mobsters.”
Paramilitary police shoot monks and nuns, ethnic repression masterminded by faceless trio,
as well as reports from residents saying that one farmer had been killed, and possibly a monk, with a dozen more people wounded.
Check out Jane Macartney's article in The Times, reporting from Beijing