Rev. Danny Fisher

This from our friend Tom Armstrong: In a dishearteing, but must-read op-ed piece for the New York Times today, Columbia University Tibetologist Robbie Barnett asks, “Did Britatin just sell Tibet?”

The financial crisis is going to do more than increase unemployment, bankruptcy and homelessness. It is also likely to reshape international alignments, sometimes in ways that we would not expect.

As Western powers struggle with the huge scale of the measures needed to revive their economies, they have turned increasingly to China. Last month, for example, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, asked China to give money to the International Monetary Fund, in return for which Beijing would expect an increase in its voting share.

Now there is speculation that a trade-off for this arrangement involved a major shift in the British position on Tibet, whose leading representatives in exile this weekend called on their leader, the Dalai Lama, to stop sending envoys to Beijing — bringing the faltering talks between China and the exiles to a standstill.

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Britain’s concession could be China’s most significant achievement on Tibet since American support for Tibetan guerillas was ended before Nixon’s visit to Beijing. Including China in global decision-making is welcome, but Western powers should not rewrite history to get support in the financial crisis. It may be more than banks and failed mortgages that are sold off cheap in the rush to shore up ailing economies.

Thaung Htun, the UN representative for the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma–the government in exile made up of many of those elected to office in 1990 but not allowed to lead by the junta–has responded forcefully in the pages of the Guardian to their insulting and sensationally-titled piece “Not Such a Hero After All”. That piece argued (wrongly, I think) that democratically-elected Prime Minister and imprisoned Nobel Peace laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was failing her people by “not reacting” to recent problems in Burma.

As I said before, I think I have more to say on this, but I’m compiling at the moment.

On the heels of the recent meeting of exiled Tibetan leaders in Dharamsala, India, the Associated Press reports that China continues to assert its grip on Tibet:

Chinese paramilitary police with riot shields and batons abruptly took up posts Monday on the main street of [Xiahe], disrupting the bustle of Buddhist pilgrims in a reminder of China’s determined control of the region.

With some Tibetans pushing harder against Chinese rule, the communist government is determined to pacify the area.

The show of force Monday was meant to deter unrest while a local court sentenced a group of Tibetans for taking part in large anti-government protests in March in Xiahe, a small town abutting a sprawling complex of golden-roofed temples.

Though the verdicts were not publicly announced, the trial also seemed timed to answer the complaints of the Dalai Lama and other exiled leaders meeting in India over the weekend that Tibetans’ patience with China’s domination was thinning.

This via our pal Nate over at Precious Metal: