When practice goes against preaching
Updated: 2008-03-30 21:05
BEIJING - The "peaceful demonstrations" in Tibet and other parts of China have so far left 18 civilians and two police officers dead. Could they rest in peace if they heard the prayers that a "simple monk" offered for them in India on Friday?
The "spontaneous peaceful protest" became "recent tragic events" in the Dalai Lama's speech this time, and he was finally aware that "some Chinese have also died".
However, why did His Holiness, who was said to "have a historical and moral responsibility to speak out freely on behalf of Tibetan people" this time say: "I have no power to tell the movement to shut up" as violence spread from Lhasa to neighboring provinces, causing further casualties?
Some things change. Some never do.
About 40 of the 241 injured police officers, who were portrayed as cold-blooded shooters by the Dalai Lama and his backers, are still in hospitals. They were stabbed, beaten or burned by what he called "non-violent people" in a so-called "crackdown".
He repeatedly showed "no desire to seek Tibet's separation" and termed himself "someone who is prepared to consider himself a member of the large family that is the People's Republic of China" this time.
Yet his followers, shouting "Free Tibet", have kept staging attacks at Chinese embassies in major Western countries, ripping and burning the Chinese flag and raising the Tibetan flag.
Would a sincere Beijing Olympics supporter allow his followers in different places around the world, using different approaches, to call for a boycott of the summer Games?
Let alone the fact that an "independence torch" was unveiled on Sunday in New Delhi by Tibetan exiles and brought right before his eyes from the northern Indian town of Dharamshala, home to his "government-in-exile".
And again, how can this simple monk justify saying "he has no wish to drive a wedge between the Tibetan and Chinese People" on Friday and then telling the world one day later: "We have heard that a few hundred Chinese soldiers were masquerading as monks"?
I have no power to make this "simple monk" truly as simple as a monk. I only know that I have heard sweet words one day and seen them contradicted the next.
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