I want to put the copypasta of my latest brother's email in here. I must admit to my greatest shame, I haven't been seriously watching any news for almost a week now, and I usually rarely take the time watch more than two news channels per day (Euronews for a global world view and BFM tv to know what's going on in France), and let's not even talk about buying a newspaper like the Frankfurter Allgemeine and actually read it. That's why, well, this came quite as a shock to me:
(By the way, as some of you might know or not know, my brother is studying economics and chinese in Germany, but he has been an exchange student in China for more than one and a half year now, and for the moment he's in Kunming in Yunnan, the south-west of China.)




Hello everybody,

I'm sending this email to everybody on my contact list because i think it is important, if you are not interested sorry to spam your email inbox.

I just got an email from a friend from chengdu (west china, bordering region to tibet) which i send to you in the original version (see the bottom of the page), i just erased my friends name. please also have a look in the zip file attached, it describes what a tourist experienced in lahsa these days.

short summary for all those who didn't follow the news recently:
last weekend anti-chinese-protests of tibeteans started which escalated into riots. according to the chinese government at least 13 people died until now, according to the tibetean exile government over 100 died.
the protests started in tibet and spread over to the bordering provinces of sichuan, gansu and qinghai of which huge parts used to be tibet as well. a lot of tibeteans live in this area as well.
according to an article that i just read (http://www.welt.de/politik/article1817231/Hunderte_Tibeter_stuermen_chinesische_Stadt.html) a thousand tibetens attacked a chinese city in gansu and hissed the tibetean flag.

according to the chinese media everything is under control, but many websites were closed like youtube, several hongkong and taiwan newspapers. bbc and cnn broadcastings are blackened out. the chinese media are insufficient and tell about the case perhaps on page eighteen and not on page one like f.e. german medias.
french medias reported it only from tuesday on on a broader base since there were communal elections in france this weekend.
hong kong and taiwan newspapers report about iton their first pages as well though it isn't today anymore on hong kongs "the standard". british and american newspapers also report on their first page about it.
feel free to inform yourself what the media say.
an interesting article to be found on taiwans newspaper "taipei times": http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2008/03/20/2003406291

i just want to give you an "nearly-insiders" view of the situation.

according to my friend in chengdu there have been several protests in chengdu as well and apparently a bomb exploded on one bus, perhaps even a second one. if the rumeurs can be trusted 3 people died. there is no reporting about those cases according to my knowledge. the city seems liked sieged, police troops are present everywhere also according to another friend of mine from chengdu.

in my quarter in kunming (capital of yunnan province in the south west of china, yunnan also has an important tibetean population) nothing is to be felt except if you read the international newspapers. i've seen only one article on page 18 of a chinese newspaper so far. it was very short.
according to rumeurs there have also been protests in kunming but not in my quarter so far.
another newspaper of the "世界报 world newspaper (i think)" reported totally wrong facts, that the international press is also against the tibetean protests. it emphasized that the world community stands behind china. i will not say for any other thing wether it is right or wrong, but this is absolutly wrong. also taiwan and hong kong critisized the happenings in tibet, the potential new taiwanese president Ma even thought publicly about boycotting the olympic games.

just for your information

sincerely yours
[name of my brother removed]




Bonjour,

ici en Chine, a Chengdu (Sichuan) nous n'avons aucune information, seulement des rumeurs. Par exemple, le quatier tibétain de Chengdu est pris tous les jours dans des révoltes, et chose visible, les flics comme l'armée font le siège dans le centre ville. Si nous l'avions oublié, le gouvernement nous le rappelle: le gouvernement quadrille et passe le Tibet au karcher. Nous sommes maintenant presque sûr qu'une bombe a explosé dans le bus 92 à Chengdu avant-hier. Mais voilà, ce ne sont que des rumeurs, trois morts et deux grièvement blessés. Les informations n'en parlent pas mais tout le monde l'a vu, les rumeurs se recoupent...
Je suis en contact avec une journaliste de France Info et le consul de France, et les journalistes étrangers ne savent même pas que la situation à Chengdu dégénère sérieusement, que deux bombes ont sans doute déjà explosé.
il ne faut pas l'oublier, les tibétains ne sont pas qu'au Tibet et les inssurections se passent un peu partout en Chine. Le gouvernement est dépassé et réagi avec violence et la place au dialogue est impossible.

Je vous joins un texte écrit par un touriste anonyme qui se trouvait à Lhassa la semaine dernière. C'est un témoignage que vous devez faire circuler.

Merci de tenir au courant les gens que vous connaissez qui sont en Chine et qui ne peuvent pas avoir accès à ces informations.
Cette censure d'information est très frustrante, surtout lorsque nous sommes habitués à en recevoir en masse.

Il ne faut pas croire que le dialogue est possible, mais il faut que vous réagissez en Europe, soyez avides d'informations car la situation est terrible pour les tibétains, le ménage a déjà bien commencé.

Faîtes circuler ce mail,

J'espère que tout le monde va bien


My more or less accurate translation of the french part:


Hello

Here in China, in Chengdu, Sichuan, we don't have any informations, just rumours. For example the tibetain district of Chengdu is involved every day in riots, and clearly the cops and the army have occupied down-town. In case we had forgotten, the gouvernment reminds us: the government polices and they take radical actions in the tibet. We are now almost sure that a bomb exploded in the bus 92 in Chengdu two days ago. But here we are, these are only rumours, three deadly victims and two severely injured persons. The news don't tell anything about that, but everybody has seen it, the rumours coincide...
I'm in contact with a journalist from France Info and the consul of France, and the foreign journalists don't even know that the situation in Chengdu is seriously escalating, that two bombs have without doubts already exploded.
On shouldn't forget that Tibetains aren't only located in Tibet and the revolts are happening almost everywhere in China. The gouvernment is out of date and reacts with violence, the dialogue is impossible.

I'll join a report written by an anonymous tourist who was in Lhasa last week. It's an testimony that you should make circulate.

Thank you for informing the people you know who are in China and who can't have any access to those informations.
This censure of information is very frustrating, especially when you are used to having them en masse.

You mustn't think that dialogue is possible, but you have to react in Europe, be anxious about informations as the situation for the Tibetains is terrifying, the cleansing has already started.

Make this email circulate

I hope everyone is fine.

(Please tell me if the translation is fine, I'm not doing this everyday after all and I don't want to give a wrong impression in my translation...)

Download of the attachment via Megaupload
Yousendit
Sendspace

Tell me if you don't like Megaupload and I'll find something else, that's no problem at all.


And now I'm going to watch the news on tv and see if I can take some time to read the papers. *sighs and ogles at her homework*

There are also news on the LJ board, but I'll just link you to read them by yourself in the the_lj_herald and the ljspeaks comms, I'm not in the mood to even scowl at what those jerks are finding as sad excuses concerning their actions those last days.


And by the way, feel free to link and or to spread the word if you want to. I can't guarantee being capable of involving in long political discussions, but I'm still interested in spreading the word.