Georg Blume (born 1963 in Hanover) is a German journalist and has been a correspondent in Beijing (China) for the German newspapers Die Zeit and taz since 1997. He has reported repeatedly on human rights issues and environmental scandals in China. Before being posted in China he has reported from Japan and France. [1] He was one of the last independent reporters from Lhasa during the 2008 unrest in Tibet before being de facto expelled from the region. [2]
The 2008 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad and commonly known as Beijing 2008, was an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008 in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) competed in 28 sports and 302 events. This was the first time China had hosted the Summer Olympic Games, and the third time the Games had been held in East Asia, following the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, and the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. These were also the third Summer Olympic Games staged in a developing country after the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
Human rights in mainland China is periodically reviewed by the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC), on which the government of the People's Republic of China and various foreign governments and human rights organizations have often disagreed. PRC authorities, their supporters, and other proponents claim that existing policies and enforcement measures are sufficient to guard against human rights abuses. However other countries and their authorities, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as Human Rights in China and Amnesty International, and citizens, lawyers, and dissidents inside the country, state that the authorities in mainland China regularly sanction or organize such abuses.
Xinhua News Agency or New China News Agency is the official state-run press agency of the People's Republic of China. Xinhua is the biggest and most influential media organization in China, as well as the largest news agency in the world in terms of correspondents worldwide. Xinhua is a ministry-level institution subordinate to the State Council and is the highest ranking state media organ in the country alongside the People's Daily. Its president is a member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.
The Panchen Lama, is a tulku of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. Panchen Lama is one of the most important figures in the Gelug tradition, with its spiritual authority second only to Dalai Lama. "Panchen" is a portmanteau of "Pandita" and "Chenpo", meaning "Great scholar".
Chökyi Gyalpo, also referred to by his secular name Gyaincain Norbu or Gyaltsen Norbu, is considered the 11th Panchen Lama by the government of the People's Republic of China. He is also the vice president of the Buddhist Association of China. Gyalpo is considered by some to be a proxy of the government of China.
The Sing Tao Daily, or Sing Tao for short, is a Chinese language newspaper based in Toronto, Ontario. It is jointly owned by the Hong Kong-based Sing Tao News Corporation and the Canadian publishing conglomerate Torstar Corporation, parent company of the Toronto Star.
Lobsang Trinley Lhündrub Chökyi Gyaltsen, ; was the tenth Panchen Lama, officially the 10th Panchen Erdeni, of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. Panchen Lamas are living emanations of the buddha Amitaba. He was often referred to simply as Choekyi Gyaltsen.
Edward Wong is an American journalist and a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. Wong served as one of the Times' primary correspondents in Baghdad, covering the Iraq War from November 2003 through June 2007. He then moved to the paper's Beijing bureau in April 2008, following a sabbatical at Middlebury College and the International Chinese Language Program (ICLP) in Taiwan improving his Mandarin. He eventually became the Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, before leaving in 2017 to take up a Ferris Professorship of Journalism at Princeton University. He is currently a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
The 2008 Summer Olympics torch relay was run from March 24 until August 8, 2008, prior to the 2008 Summer Olympics, with the theme of "one world, one dream". Plans for the relay were announced on April 26, 2007, in Beijing, China. The relay, also called by the organizers as the "Journey of Harmony", lasted 129 days and carried the torch 137,000 km (85,000 mi) – the longest distance of any Olympic torch relay since the tradition was started ahead of the 1936 Summer Olympics.
The history of Tibet from 1950 to the present includes the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, and the Battle of Chamdo. Before then, Tibet had been a "de-facto" independent state/province under the governance of the Republic of China. In 1951, Tibetan representatives in Beijing signed the Seventeen-point Agreement under duress, which affirmed China's sovereignty over Tibet while it simultaneously provided for an autonomous administration led by Tibet's spiritual leader, and then-political leader, the 14th Dalai Lama. During the 1959 Tibetan uprising, when Tibetans arose to prevent his possible assassination, the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet to northern India where he established the Central Tibetan Administration, which rescinded the Seventeen-point Agreement. The majority of Tibet's land mass, including all of U-Tsang and areas of Kham and Amdo, was officially established in 1965 as Tibet Autonomous Region, within China.
The 2008 Tibetan unrest was a series of protests and demonstrations over the Chinese government's treatment and alleged persecution of Tibetans. The unrest also included ethnic conflicts between Tibetans and Han and Hui Chinese.
A number of concerns and controversies surfaced before, during, and after the 2008 Summer Olympics, and which received major media coverage. Leading up to the Olympics, there were concerns about human rights in China, such that many high-profile individuals, such as politicians and celebrities, announced intentions to boycott the games to protest China's role in the Darfur conflict, and Myanmar, its stance towards Tibet, or other aspects of its human rights record. During the games in Beijing, the city was also under a high alert because of security concerns following civil unrest in Tibet and terrorist attacks by Xinjiang separatists. The levels of air pollution in Beijing also came under much scrutiny, due both to concerns about athletes' health and concerns that Beijing had failed to live up to promises it made during its Olympic bid. Foreign journalists at the games reportedly faced various restrictions to their work, limitations to internet access, and threats of physical violence. The gymnastics competition caused a major worldwide controversy during and after the games when some Chinese gymnasts were accused of being under the minimum age, but then cleared after an investigation. Other controversies surrounding the 2008 Summer Olympics included ticketing problems, displacement of Beijing residents due to construction and demolitions, and alleged persecution of individuals applying to protest.
The 1987–1989 Tibetan unrest were a series of pro-independence protests that took place between September 1987 and March 1989 in the Tibetan areas in the People's Republic of China: Sichuan, Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai, and the Tibetan prefectures in Yunnan and Gansu. The largest demonstrations began on March 5, 1989 in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, when a group of monks, nuns, and laypeople took to the streets as the 30th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising approached. Police and security officers attempted to put down the protests, but as tensions escalated an even greater crowd of protesters amassed. After three days of violence, martial law was declared on March 8, 1989, and foreign journalists and tourists were expelled from Tibet on March 10. Reports of deaths and military force being used against protesters were prominent. Numbers of the dead are unknown.
The 14th Dalai Lama is the current Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader of Tibet, and considered a living buddha. The Dalai Lamas are also leaders of the Gelug school, which is the newest school of Tibetan Buddhism and was formally headed by the Ganden Tripas. From the time of the 5th Dalai Lama to 1959, the central government of Tibet, the Ganden Phodrang, invested the position of Dalai Lama with temporal duties.
This article gives the international reaction to the 2008 Tibetan unrest, from countries worldwide. The 2008 Tibetan unrest was a series of protests and demonstrations, met by excessive force, focused on the persecution of Tibetans in the buildup to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. There was a mixture of outrage and understanding from leading figures abroad.
Human rights in Tibet are a contentious issue. Reported abuses of human rights in Tibet include restricted freedom of religion, belief, and association; arbitrary arrest; maltreatment in custody, including torture; and forced abortion and sterilization. The status of religion, mainly as it relates to figures who are both religious and political, such as the exile of the 14th Dalai Lama, is a regular object of criticism. Additionally, freedom of the press in China is absent, with Tibet's media tightly controlled by the Chinese leadership, making it difficult to accurately determine the scope of human rights abuses.
Dhondup Wangchen is a Tibetan filmmaker imprisoned by the Chinese government in 2008 on charges related to his documentary Leaving Fear Behind. Made with senior Tibetan monk Jigme Gyatso, the documentary consists of interviews with ordinary Tibetan people discussing the 14th Dalai Lama, the Chinese government, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and Han Chinese migrants to the region. After smuggling the tapes of the interviews out of Tibet, however, Dhondup Wangchen and Jigme Gyatso were detained during the 2008 Tibetan unrest.
Wolf Totem is a 2015 drama film based on the 2004 Chinese semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Jiang Rong. Directed by French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, the Chinese-French co-production features a Chinese student who is sent to Inner Mongolia to teach shepherds and instead learns about the wolf population, which is under threat by a government apparatchik.
According to the Tibetan government in exile, prostitution as an industry was virtually non-existent before the Chinese occupation of Tibet. According to the Tibetan Women's Association: "In the past, in Tibet there were no brothels". Tibetan lawyer Lobsang Sangay recognizes the existence of prostitution before the arrival of the Chinese, but he says that the phenomenon was minimal compared to its current extent. According to the British writer Christopher Hale, due to the practice of polyandry in Tibet, many women were unable to find a husband and moved to villages and towns, where they fell into prostitution. Their clients came from the caravans crossing the Tibetan plateau, and also from the monasteries.
Antireligious campaigns in China refer to the Chinese Communist Party's official promotion of state atheism, coupled with its persecution of people with spiritual or religious beliefs, in the People's Republic of China. Antireligious campaigns began in 1949, after the Chinese Communist Revolution, and continue today in Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, and other religious communities. State campaigns against religion have escalated since Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. For Christians, government decrees have mandated the destruction of houses of worship, such as Christian churches. In Tibet, similar decrees have mandated the destruction of Tibetan Buddhist monastic centers, of sacred Buddhist sites, of monastic residences, the denial of the Tibetan people's right to freely access their cultural heritage, and resulted in the ongoing persecution of high Buddhist lamas and of Buddhist nuns and monks. Reports of forced reeducation camps, arrests, beatings, rape, and destruction of religious sites in Tibet are likewise being made with regard to the Uyghur people, who are also allegedly being subjected to an ongoing cultural genocide.
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