Recent news show that at least some of the entertainment heavyweights still put values ahead of profit. The Chinese communist regime is responsible for the murder of 1.2 million Tibetans, the destruction of 6000 monasteries of for on-going torture and imprisonment of Tibetans who are trying to retain their freedoms. They are now prohibited from having a religion, from saying the name of or carrying images of the Dalai Lama. Most of their cultural and societal traditions have been banned and those who try to escape into India, where they can ask for exile, get shot by Chinese guards.
China has also been trying to destroy any signs of the Tibetan culture in an attempt to eradicate their identities so that any claims to freedom can disappear forever. it is currently almost impossible to find Tibetan speakers in Lhasa (the capital of Tibet) and polution and overpopulation are dripping from China into Tibet.
China has also been trying to destroy any signs of the Tibetan culture in an attempt to eradicate their identities so that any claims to freedom can disappear forever. it is currently almost impossible to find Tibetan speakers in Lhasa (the capital of Tibet) and polution and overpopulation are dripping from China into Tibet.
It is no surprise that there would be reluctance from the Chinese regime to interfere in other human rights issues. But it is important to maintain international pressure for a needed change in their policies. .
Below is an excerpt of an article on Spielberg's decision written by Philip Stephens.:
SMALL tremors sometimes foreshadow bigger shocks. Few people will have known before last week that Steven Spielberg — he of Jaws, Jurassic Park, ET and other Hollywood epics — was to lend his creative talents to the Beijing Olympics.
Of itself, his withdrawal on grounds of conscience scarcely registers on the Richter scale. Spielberg’s protest, though, is not without significance. It maps out uncomfortable terrain for China that reaches well beyond the choreography of this summer’s Olympic ceremonies.
Spielberg concluded that Beijing had not deployed sufficient influence to help bring a halt to the killing in the Sudanese province of Darfur. China is Sudan’s most important economic partner. It has invested heavily in its energy industry and buys most of its oil. In Spielberg’s view — one shared, incidentally, at the United Nations (UN) — it could apply much more pressure on Khartoum.
The Sudanese regime has obstructed all efforts by the international community to bring an end to the terror wrought in Darfur by the so-called Janjaweed militias. Only last week fighting spilled over into neighbouring Chad. Sudan has blocked the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force. China is the only big power with real leverage.
Spielberg is far from alone in his disquiet. The actress Mia Farrow has led a celebrity campaign labelling this summer’s event the “genocide Olympics”.
A clutch of Nobel peace laureates have added their voices to the protest, writing to Hu Jintao, the Chinese president.
These gestures are keenly felt. The Olympics have been planned meticulously to showcase China’s rise. Beijing expects the games to confer the prestige and respect it considers its due as a fast-emerging global power. Boycotts and protests over Darfur — alongside separate calls for China to loosen its grip on Tibet — provoke a mixture of anger and angst.
