一个亲历西藏事件的外国人眼中的见闻

So I don\'t even know where to begin. We left Lhasa by 4x4 on the morning of the 18th and arrived in Kathmandu yesterday evening. I spent a few hours last night and this morning scanning through all of your comments and I\'ll try to respond to a few right now. First, as Joakim and others have pointed out, a lot of the photos from the \'Lhasa Burning\' post show people\'s faces and may lead to their arrest. As such, I will be taking these particular photos down - if you think other photos should be taken down for similar reasons please make a comment so that I know about it. I will admit that I struggled with this decision for a little while: many of those shown in the photos were acting little better than violent thugs when the pictures were taken (e.g. in the flag burning photo one of those shown began throwing rocks at others in the hotel moments after I took the picture) so I\'m unsure if they actually deserve any protection from the authorities. That said, I will keep those particular photos off my blog for now. Second, I\'ve read a few comments on this blog and elsewhere (e.g. Swrostmore\'s comment on Digg) insinuating that I may be a Chinese agent. I wouldn\'t normally dignify these accusations with a response but one of the posters who had commented did have a very valid point (my apologies but I can\'t remember who it was). Do not just rely on one source for your information: what I and the others I was with saw does not sum up the entire situation, especially after the 14th, when we were under lockdown without access to the internet and probably knew even less than what you on the outside knew. As an example, yes, I can and I did report that things were quiet where we were located after the 14th. That doesn\'t mean things were quiet throughout the city and just because it was quiet where we were doesn\'t mean things weren\'t going down that I didn\'t know about (e.g. arrests). I can\'t report these other things without stipulating that they are not confirmed because I cannot be sure they actually happened - all I know for sure is that things were quiet where I was. I think it would fair to speculate that we (those of us in the hotel on the 14th and 15th) probably saw more than our fair share of violence being waged by Tibetans while missing the vast majority of violence being waged on Tibetans by the PLA. Third, a huge part of the comments are directed towards the issue of whether or not Tibet should be a sovereign nation and who ultimately bears the blame for this situation. I think I inadvertently became a defender of the Chinese government and its policies in Tibet through my posts highlighting the violence of the rioters: I want to make clear that this was NOT my intention. Tibet is obviously an extremely complex issue and one that I will not pretend to be deeply knowledgeable on. My very simple and ignorant opinion on the topic can be boiled down to this: if a majority of Tibetans want independence from China, I think they should be given it. That said, I do not think violence against ordinary people is justifable (whether or not they are "colonists") and I think the bias of the mainstream media against China is never acceptable, even if the cause is just and worthy. I sincerely believe that lies and manipulation will at the end of the day hurt more than help any movement. The War on Iraq may have had the positive consequence of bringing down a brutal dictator but it will always be remembered more for the lies that started it. Tibet, as I said above, is a complex issue: as I have seen in these protests, it is not simply a matter of the big, bad Chinese government versus the Tibetan underdogs, which is unfortunately how the media has tried to shape this issue. Why we (those in the \'newsroom\' in the hotel on the 14th and 15th) decided to upload the video of the motorcyclist being attacked is because we had seen from the news that this was exactly what was not being reported. We suspected this might be the case from the very start when our photos began to be picked up by the media: my photo of the Chinese soldiers in the shield formation and the Tibetan man burning the Chinese flag might be very powerful, but do they really tell the story of what happened that day any better than a bus of civilians being stoned and a man lying on the pavement after having been brutally attacked? No, but these other photos would have taken too much effort to explain to an audience that has become used to the narrative of a bad China and a good Tibet. So yeah, there was never a hidden agenda. I don\'t think anyone in that room had particularly strong feelings on the issue: all we wanted to do was get the truth out, no matter how complex and how hard it was for people to swallow. And on the subject of the shield formation photo that made it to the front page of the New York Times: I don\'t think any news outlet that has used it has also reported that moments after the photo was taken, Tibetans charged and the line broke, with the soldiers dropping their shields and helmets. A few minutes later when I was taking pictures of their gear and was prepared to follow the crowd that had broken through towards Ramoqe Monastery, a Tibetan woman on her way back told me not to go as someone had been stoned to death there. A few seconds after she said this, the crowd returned and declared their intention to go towards Jokhang Monastery. I never saw any bodies so this, like many other things on this blog, is just speculation: but if what the woman said was true I believe that the first death of the day on the 14th was likely a policeman from that line who was cut off from his comrades (Beijing confirmed the next day that one of the deaths on the 14th was a policeman). Either way, I am as the title states, safe and sound in Kathmandu and am now dodging bags of water instead of rocks (apparantly in the days leading up to Holi people begin target practice by hurling bags of water at foreigners). I have been hit a few times but I am sure you will be happy to know that one of my water tosses absolutely smoked a Nepalese brat who was running away after having hit a motorist and another one of my shots hit the guy in the passenger seat of the car who had been conducting drive-by water tosses on us. It was all very satisfying (though I also hit an innocent bystander once and felt really, really bad). There are about a dozen of us who are actually going to get gear for the big day (e.g. white shirts, goggles). I have also decided to try to not eat meat for the rest of our trip (just over a month). I figure India and Nepal are the places to try it (Tibet would have been good too, but yak is just too delicious to pass up). We\'ll see how long that lasts (I\'m at one day at the moment). About to get soaked as he leaves this internet cafe, K