The author doesn’t even know the Tibetan Prefectures and counties are manufactured by the commies in the 1960′s with Chinese names. Prior to that there were no Chinese equivalent names to the Tibetan regions.

You said, “Unfortunately, for Western audiences, journalists go weak at the knees when it comes to the Dalai Lama or Tibet.” You are wrong; it’s not the journalists but the academicians who go weak at the knees of Chinese govt for a chance to do research trips to China popularly known as “guanxi access.”

You also said, “When journalists write about the ‘Tibetan cause’ they are typically writing about the Tibetan exile cause.” You are right, journalists do not have access to go to Tibet.

China has not and does not “occupy” Tibet. That much is crystal clear under international law. It is not the US in Iraq nor the US in Afghanistan nor Israel in Palestine. Every country recognizes China’s claim over Tibet. Even The Tibetan government in exile recognizes it and always has since they signed the 17-point.

China is not colonizing Tibet. Anyone who has been to Tibet will tell you that. Anyone that knows what colonization means will tell you that.

China does not systematically discriminate against Tibetans. There is no law in China that singles out Tibetans for ethnic or religious discrimination. Sautman was again, correct, and Sloane left with a lie.

Sloane gets both big and small facts wrong here.

(2) No, there’s no double standard. Please respond to what I wrote, not to your stereotypes. This is a standard line of China apologists for Tibet’s illegal annexation: tu quoque, “you did it, too.” Yes, that’s true: the United States has indeed been guilty of colonialism, particularly in and after the Spanish-American War of 1898, and of worse conduct. The United States (and Europeans before that), to take the example you raise, carried out what is today recognized as the slow genocide of Native Americans over the course of several centuries. More broadly, Europeans spent some four centuries colonizing the whole world in the name of what they regarded as their more advanced civilization. Nowhere in my article did I defend these or similar actions. Nor would I. But today most people recognize that such conduct is morally abhorrent. Regardless, since the UN Charter, to which China is an original party, the use of military force to annex territory has been illegal under international law.

International human rights law vests all human beings, without distinction, with protections against arbitrary state action and abuse. That’s the standard; there’s nothing “double” about it.

(3) The wealth transfers have been to the colonizers, that is, to Han settlers who have been incentivized to resettle in Tibet by the PRC’s policies. Tibetan nomads and peasants remain some of the poorest people on the planet.

(4) History: How far back shall we go? Is China “part of” Mongolia because the Mongol Empire ruled China for centuries (far longer, incidentally, than China ever ruled Tibet in the pre-1949 period of recorded history)? Of course not. The contemporary law of self-determination allows all “peoples” to decide their own political destiny. The Han (Chinese) people certainly have that right under contemporary international law. So do the Tibetan people. China should allow them to exercise it freely.

(5) Third paragraph: Please go back and read what I wrote. I didn’t say that “I” find it difficult to fathom what could lead to these tragic self-immolations. I said that it’s probable that others would, and I tried to explain why it’s not satisfactory to ascribe 36 self-immolations to “suicide politics,” as your remarks – again – aptly illustrate.

(6) There is a difference between understanding and justification. I wrote that I neither condemn nor condone the self-immolations; only that we need to understand them accurately. As for 9/11, the comparison is bizarre. But no, I don’t think it’s difficult to understand what the 9/11 terrorists believed; in that case, too, it would be a grave error to suppose that the attacks were “irrational.” Like most human actions, there’s a means-end rationality even to catastrophic terrorism of the sort represented by 9/11. But that’s very different from saying that the attacks were justified, which, needless to say, I do not believe.

(7) I addressed the final paragraph earlier. In short, it imputes views to me that I do not hold and amounts to no more than “tu quoque,” which is, neither morally nor legally, satisfactory. The last sentence, however, is unclear. To what “alternative morality” do you refer? What “complicated tasks” am I unable to comprehend? I would guess that this is a thinly veiled — and tellingly vague –justification for China’s continuing colonial administration of Tibet. But I leave that for you to clarify if you wish or for others to decide for themselves – hopefully by reading what you wrote.

Joking aside, if Tibet was not ruled by China, Tibet today would mirror medieval Europe. Just visit the Potala Palace, its lavishness is beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. On the other hand, believe it or not, China has made huge transfers of wealth and investment to the region in consequence of which Tibetans today are living a much freer economic life. Under the rule of the Lamas the poor Tibetan peasants couldn’t even secure basic food or shelter and economic freedom is also a unalienable human right.

It is ridiculous to link every suicide attempt to justified motives. If Professor Sloane finds it hard to
‘fathom what could lead people to douse themselves in gasoline and die agonizing deaths to make a political or moral statement,’ I wonder whether he finds it hard to fathom what could lead people to plan such a sophisticated and costly attack as ’9/11′ and fly their planes into the twin towers (mind you these perpetrators of 9/11 must have been well educated to hit the target!).

What is difficult to understand is how people hold such double standards. The American settlers invaded America and killed almost all Indians, but do you suggest that the Indians should take back their land now? Russia forcefully occupied a vast land in the Far East that used to belong to China, what is Russia’s legitimacy over that land then? The argument that Sloane advances is simply like that of’human right terrorists’. It takes the high moral ground but cannot comprehend bringing to bear an alternative morality and the complicated tasks that applying that morality has at hand.

I agree. Nuclear ambiguity deters the enemy than nuclear certainty. But The problem with India is, unlike Israel, it’s a declared nuclear state. We cannot be ambiguous now.