13 ms·
China : Tibet :: Israel : Palestine, they are analogous in many ways. The human rights groups talk about the problems, we recognize it is bad, the weaker ethni
by bhouston 10y ago
China : Tibet :: Israel : Palestine, they are analogous in many ways. The human rights groups talk about the problems, we recognize it is bad, the weaker ethnic community suffers and is oppressed, the more powerful ethnic group makes slow but steady progress in exerting its wishes, and no real changes are effected by the international community.
- auganov 10y agoIsn't that the nature of almost every conflict with an ethnic context? If there's no clear weaker and stronger you usually end up with two independent states. The way Tibet was Incorporated into China, the nature of the Tibetan resistance, the way China governs Tibet, the reason China wants Tibet, the reason China represses Tibetans are all very very different from what's happening in Judea and Samaria. The Israeli Arab conflict is perhaps the most unique of all time. The better analogies perhaps are some of the separatist leaning Russian Republics or India's Jammu and Kashmir
- bhouston 10y agoauganov wrote: > Isn't that the nature of almost every conflict with an ethnic context? If there's no clear weaker and stronger you usually end up with two independent states. Your statement is sort of weird in the above. It presupposes that subjugation of a weaker ethnic group by a more powerful ethnic group is acceptable -- that is how these conflicts are resolved. It is counter to the idea of universal human rights that arose because of the the atrocities that arose because of the ethnic issues in WW2. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_human_rights#After_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_human_rights#After_... Your point of view, the powerful ethnic groups win and the weak lose and that is how the world works, justifies slavery, South African apartheid, and many other situations where one ethnic group is more powerful and wishes to impose its wishes on the less powerful. That is an allowable perspective, but that is antithesis to universal human rights.
- auganov 10y agoNo. My point was/is: 1. Stronger vs Weaker is a common pattern in such conflicts. 2. Tibet vs China :: Palestine/Arab states vs Israel differ in almost every other feature. 3. There's places in the world that better mimic the Tibetan situation. 4. Hence the analogy isn't very good. I did not make any moral judgments.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- coldtea 10y ago>Your point of view, the powerful ethnic groups win and the weak lose and that is how the world works, justifies slavery, South African apartheid Or a legal system, where blacks are hugely over-represented, the takeover of native american land, Puerto Rico, etc. "Universal human rights" take usually less precedence to "my country, right or wrong".
- dave2000 10y agoNo, it's perfectly meaningful to talk about Israel/Palestine - and by extension the US - when criticizing actions by China. Otherwise you end up with the same narrative you get in pretty much every media outlet in the world; whatever the US does is good, no terrorism or support for murderous dictators there (cough south america..cuba...saudi arabia..iran...iraq...indonesia etc etc etc ), and whatever China does is bad.
- douche 10y agoChina and Tibet is more like what would have happened if the Arab Legion and the other Arab powers weren't so blindingly incompetent in 1947. There's a long, long history of China controlling Tibet, back at least to the Tang dynasty. The ChiComs are nastier about it than most of the previous Chinese governments, but that's what you get when you refute the old mandate of heaven/chakravartin mashup of political legitimacy espoused by the old empire for ... what justification do the ChiComs give for their political legitimacy? Having the biggest boot and the willingness to murder millions and imprison more, I suppose.
- toyg 10y ago> what justification do the ChiComs give for their political legitimacy? Well, it's right there in art. I of their own Constitution, I think: "The People’s Republic of China is a socialist state under the people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants." It might have its problems (will the country forever have "workers" and "peasants"? Does the working class include peasants? Who does a democratic dictatorship actually dictate to? etc etc) but it's still better than divine mandate, tbh, which might explain why it's not been toppled yet.
- coldtea 10y agoThe same legitimacy every other large government has. At least they only piss in their own pool -- not mess with peoples all around the world.
- iofj 10y ago
- rahimnathwani 10y agoWhat are these differences?
- cscurmudgeon 10y ago> India's Jammu and Kashmir Except there was no ethnic cleansing by the Tibetans like in Kashmir. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing_of_Kashmiri_Hindus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing_of_Kashmiri_H...
- intended 10y agoYes China is doing it much better. No press, full military control, reincarnation is literally banned (this means the next spirtiual/political leader is decided by the communist leadership), followed by the settling of mainlanders in Tibet. These settlers in turn disdain and look down on the Tibetans and their existence.
- iofj 10y agoAnd yet 5 posts away you see people blaming Israelis for refusing to expose themselves to that same treatment. The big detail always omitted is that Palestinians have their culture in a massive area, yet Israelis don't have one square meter more than what they have there. Oh, and the Palestinian culture is the one with the extensive history of violently oppressing other cultures and religions ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians ), including in Palestina itself ( http://int.icej.org/media/palestinian-christians http://int.icej.org/media/palestinian-christians ). All of the world, of course, is silent on that. Not that they just persecute Christians ( https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Persecution_of_Homosexuals_%28Palestinian_Authority_area%29 https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Persecution_of_Homosexuals_%28Pal... http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/08/what-it-s-like-to-be-an-atheist-in-palestine.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/08/what-it-s-l... etc.) All of it doesn't matter. Nobody's willing to fight for Tibet, or for Atheists, or ... Fight, as in "fight, kill and die", credibly, against the dictatorship that rules China, against, well let's be honest here : against most Muslims, and I'm sure there will be occasionally some slight effort required against a Christian too. Looking at a map of 1950's, finding China, and looking at China now will make anyone scared. Can someone point me to a good Mandarin course ?
- dang 10y ago
- sandGorgon 10y agoJ&K has nothing to do with ethnicity. There is a larger number of people who don't want to separate from India than there are who want to. J&K is a territorial flashpoint - with ethnic unrest that is funded.
- golergka 10y agoHow many terror acts do tibetian supporters commit on an average month in China?
- toyg 10y agoDo your human rights diminish if you fight back in the "wrong" way?
- golergka 10y agoIf it's a choice between your human rights and someone else's life — obviously. Also, "fight back in a wrong way" is a very curious way to label brutal attacks targeting civilians that go on non-stop for the last hundred years — long before any of alleged grievances that you would be "fighting back" against even began.
- yompers888 10y agoDoesn't Tibet lack a certain penchant for poorly aimed rockets and human shields in a way that detracts from this analogy?
- zyngaro 10y agoSure and Tibetans are not packed in open air prisons and deprived of any rights whatsoever either.
- bhouston 10y agoyompers888 wrote: > Doesn't Tibet lack a certain penchant for poorly aimed rockets and human shields in a way that detracts from this analogy? Tibetians have tried various tactics, including violence, to oppose Chinese rule but none of them have been effective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_and_uprisings_in_Tibet_since_1950 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_and_uprisings_in_Tibe... This gets back to what I say in my original post, slow and steady achievement of the stronger ethnic groups goals over a period of decades in the face of ineffective resistance by the weaker ethnic group.
- Udik 10y ago> a certain penchant for poorly aimed rockets and human shields As for that, I'm all in favour of giving Palestine high precision missiles and an Iron Dome system.
- flubar 10y agoWe need generalisations to make sense of the world around us, but they always come at a cost of accuracy. Sometimes, the loss of accuracy is so great that the generalization does more harm than good. I think trying to equate the causes and possible solutions of this situation with the Israel-Palestine situation is one such example.
- LionessLover 10y agoYep. Human brains are made to see faces in clouds - and patterns everywhere. Because its the only way for that little brain to function. In reality nothing is the same unless it's identical (not a copy - but the exact same thing, maybe seen from different angles or at different times). We like our clever analogies, and they serve a purpose, but even when making them it's best to be aware that it's a product of our brain and to always be ready to question if it actually serves the intended purpose. Even if you can use a specific analogy in one context doesn't mean it's useful in another one. I think it's okay to make such analogies - as long as everybody including the person making them is aware of the shortcomings and that being able to make one is a very, very low threshold, given that it comes from brains that see animals and human faces in floating water vapor.
- godzillabrennus 10y agoIsrael and Palestine seems a bit more complex to me. They are trying to find a solution for two groups of people with very different cultural standards for how to live life to cohabit a small bit of land. Tibet is a pimple on a pimple in size compared to the rest of China.