Missing: monks who defied Beijing

By Nigel Morris

"They were the 15 youthful Tibetan monks – three still in their teens – who sparked a rebellion by daring to speak out against China's repression of their homeland.

"The group paraded peacefully down Barkhor Street in Lhasa old town on 10 March handing out leaflets, chanting pro-independence slogans and carrying the banned Tibetan flag. Their demand was that the Chinese government that has ruled Tibet since 1951 should ease a 'patriotic re-education' campaign which forced them to denounce the Dalai Lama and subjected them to government propaganda.

"The reaction of the authorities, desperate to snuff out the most serious uprising against Chinese rule for almost half a century, was rapid and brutal. The group was detained on the spot, with eyewitnesses reporting that several of the monks suffered severe beatings as they were arrested and taken away. They have not been seen since.

"Amnesty International called last night for their immediate release, along with all the other anti-Chinese demonstrators picked up in the past three weeks. The human rights organisation said they were at 'high risk of torture and other ill treatment' and called on supporters to write to Hu Jintao, the Chinese President, with copies to the Chinese embassy in London.

"Steve Ballinger, a UK spokesman for Amnesty, said: 'China's reaction to peaceful protests in Tibet and neighbouring provinces – detaining demonstrators, flooding the area with troops and reportedly using violence – does not bode well for the Olympics ...'"
The Independent


Monsters and Critics.com

Tibetan monks begin 3-day hunger strike
Mumbai Newsline, India - 11 hours ago
Mumbai, March 24 Cries of ‘Bodgyallo’ (Victory to Tibet) reverberated across Azad Maidan on Monday evening as around 600 Tibetan monks began their hunger ...
Tibetan monks protest ‘genocide’ The Statesman
Exiled Tibetans continue their peaceful demonstration Thaindian.com
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Independent - Reuters
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Gulf Times

Nepal police stop Tibetan protest in front of Chinese embassy visa ...
International Herald Tribune, France - 3 hours ago
AP KATMANDU, Nepal: Police in Nepal have stopped a protest by Tibetan refugees and monks in front of the Chinese embassy visa office, arresting 100 people. ...
Nepalese Police Beat Monks, Refugees in Tibetan Protest; 40 Arrested FOXNews
Nepal police stop Tibetan protest in front of Chinese embassy ... The Canadian Press
Nepali police break up Tibetan protests Radio Australia
Reuters
all 217 news articles »

Free Countries Must Defy Chinese Blackmail and Greet the Dalai Lama

Categories: dalai-lama, human-rights, amnesty-international, civil-rights, torture, china, tibet, direct-action, protest

Torture in our own backyards: The fight against supermax prisons

"Imagine living in an 8-by-12 prison cell, in solitary confinement, for eight years straight. Your entire world consists of a dank, cinder block room with a narrow window only three inches high, opening up to an outdoor cement cage, cynically dubbed, "the yard." If you're lucky, you spend one hour, five days a week in that outdoor cage, where you gaze up through a wire mesh roof and hope for a glimpse of the sun. If you talk back to the guards or act out in any way, you might only venture outside one precious hour per week.

"You go eight years without shaking a hand or experiencing any physical human contact. The prison guards bark orders and touch you only while wearing leather gloves, and then it's only to put you in full cuffs and shackles before escorting you to the cold showers, where they watch your every move.

"You cannot make phone calls to your friends or family and must 'earn' two visits per month, which inevitably take place through a Plexiglass wall. You are kept in full shackles the entire time you visit with your wife and children, and have to strain to hear their voices through speakers that record your every word. With no religious or educational programs to break up the time or elevate your thoughts, it's a daily struggle to keep your mind from unraveling ...

"The effects of such extended periods of isolation on prisoners' physical and mental health, their chances of meaningful rehabilitation, and, ultimately, on the communities to which they will eventually return are coming under increasing fire, from lawyers, human rights advocates and the medical professionals who have treated them. Bolstered by growing concern over the U.S.' sanctioning of torture, and the effect that has on the country's international standing, their calls to action are gaining ground. In 2000, and again in 2006, the United Nations Committee Against Torture condemned the kind of isolation imposed by the U.S. government in federal, state and county-run supermax prisons, calling it 'extremely harsh.' 'The Committee is concerned about the prolonged isolation periods detainees are subjected to,' they stated, 'the effect such treatment has on their mental health, and that its purpose may be retribution, in which case it would constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.'"
AlterNet

Categories: prison, human-rights, crime, law, legal, civil-rights, torture, usa

Robert Fisk: The only lesson we ever learn is that we never learn

Five years on, and still we have not learnt. With each anniversary, the steps crumble beneath our feet, the stones ever more cracked, the sand ever finer. Five years of catastrophe in Iraq and I think of Churchill, who in the end called Palestine a "hell-disaster".

But we have used these parallels before and they have drifted away in the Tigris breeze. Iraq is swamped in blood. Yet what is the state of our remorse? Why, we will have a public inquiry – but not yet! If only inadequacy was our only sin.

Today, we are engaged in a fruitless debate. What went wrong? How did the people – the senatus populusque Romanus of our modern world – not rise up in rebellion when told the lies about weapons of mass destruction, about Saddam's links with Osama bin Laden and 11 September? How did we let it happen? And how come we didn't plan for the aftermath of war?

Oh, the British tried to get the Americans to listen, Downing Street now tells us. We really, honestly did try, before we absolutely and completely knew it was right to embark on this illegal war. There is now a vast literature on the Iraq debacle and there are precedents for post-war planning – of which more later – but this is not the point. Our predicament in Iraq is on an infinitely more terrible scale.

As the Americans came storming up Iraq in 2003, their cruise missiles hissing through the sandstorm towards a hundred Iraqi towns and cities, I would sit in my filthy room in the Baghdad Palestine Hotel, unable to sleep for the thunder of explosions, and root through the books I'd brought to fill the dark, dangerous hours. Tolstoy's War and Peace reminded me how conflict can be described with sensitivity and grace and horror – I recommend the Battle of Borodino – along with a file of newspaper clippings. In this little folder, there was a long rant by Pat Buchanan, written five months earlier; and still, today I feel its power and its prescience and its absolute historical honesty: "With our MacArthur Regency in Baghdad, Pax Americana will reach apogee. But then the tide recedes, for the one endeavour at which Islamic people excel is expelling imperial powers by terror or guerrilla war.

"They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon. We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before. The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history."

How easily the little men took us into the inferno, with no knowledge or, at least, interest in history. None of them read of the 1920 Iraqi insurgency against British occupation, nor of Churchill's brusque and brutal settlement of Iraq the following year.

On our historical radars, not even Crassus appeared, the wealthiest Roman general of all, who demanded an emperorship after conquering Macedonia – "Mission Accomplished" – and vengefully set forth to destroy Mesopotamia. At a spot in the desert near the Euphrates river, the Parthians – ancestors of present day Iraqi insurgents – annihilated the legions, chopped off Crassus's head and sent it back to Rome filled with gold. Today, they would have videotaped his beheading.

To their monumental hubris, these little men who took us to war five years ago now prove that they have learnt nothing. Anthony Blair – as we should always have called this small town lawyer – should be facing trial for his mendacity. Instead, he now presumes to bring peace to an Arab-Israeli conflict which he has done so much to exacerbate ...

Read on at The Independent

Categories: bush, blair, usa, iraq, uk, war, war-on-terror, disinfo, disinformation