A separate report on Reuters said the crackdown was on two East Turkestan "terrorist" groups. A government spokesman told Reuters: "At the end of last year an overseas East Turkestan terrorist group issued an order requesting its members to enter the country to be ready to launch terrorist attacks at the Beijing Olympics. (Guardian)The story goes on to note:
Human rights groups such as Amnesty International say Beijing often uses alleged terrorism as an excuse to violently repress any activism for independence in the region, whether violent or peaceful.i can't be the only person who sees this as both a diversion from the Tibet torch relay protests and a justification for preparing everyone - including and perhaps especially, journalists - for high security summer fun in Beijing.
A student asked this morning what i thought about the protests - i support them, absolutely - and we had a brief discussion about politics and sports. It's nice to think that politics can be kept out of sports, but as far as i can tell, this argument is usually made by those who don't want their own bad political positions and/or systems to be questioned, e.g. the Israeli govt, the USSR, the apartheid South African govt. My father is a huge basketball fan, and even back in the 60s i can remember him talking about racial discrimination on the court (Dr. J was his big hero, so i'm glad to say the tenor of his rants was always pro integration). Politically-embroiled olympic games are hardly new. Hungarians, in fact, will be among the first to declare this an ineluctable reality, referring to the famous Hungarian-Russian water polo match at the 1956 Olympiad in Melbourne. All i can say to complaining Chinese at this juncture is "get over it" and think about why this global resurgence of Tibetans' human rights support is happening. Suppressing the voices of our Tibetan brothers and sisters, as well as their supporters, is not the right solution to this equation.
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