Good Saturday, March 2008 Kathmandu.

So, yesterday was like the longest day. All day wondering and waiting to see what the tube has to say about the situation in Tibet. One just knows that the "human rights" is going to be absymal based on the past actions of the PLA of China. I'm sure every nun condemned to Lhasa and other parts of Tibet is just thrilled to be living in such an environment. For me, I first was introduced to the issue of political/religious rights in Cambodia, of all places. Cambodia is the the country where the Khymer Rouge actually wanted to "exterminate" the middle classes and those Cambodians who had had contact with a Westerner who could read. Before the world stepped in to stop the insanity, 3 million Cambodians had been "exterminated" and thrown into the pits outside of Phnom Penh now called the Killing Fields. So many were thrown into these pits, one has to wonder what might have happened to the earth during the decay. There were no standards.

What are the Chinese going to do to the Tibetans, the monks and nuns especially because they follow the religious life and the Chinese are avowedly against anything religious? Most activities are banned and anybody caught meditating on a Tibetan Tankha is thrown in jail and tortured. So what is going to happen now? Will the oversears start being like the Khymer Rouge were in S-21 and lie to the world about it for as long as it will hold out? Why are all outside, independant voices of verification continue to be banned and the only version is the "Chinese version"?

I know some people feel that the world is better prepared to deal with these genocides but I am not so convinced because we have failed to stop anything from going forward. Right now there is Darfur and Tibet. Two very different cultures in very different parts of the world. but both the victim of the same backer.

I remember saying at Simon's on Boengkok Lane that it was quite a trick to pull off 2 genocides; 1 in Cambodia and 1 in Tibet without ever having to admit anything. This is what is going on today; China seems engaged in a policy of altering the perceptions of the viewer in order to persuade one to believe their version of the story. Why can't all sides be equally informed? Why only bias?

These are my thoughts for today.