With the Olympics underway, steadfast idealists hope sport fosters global unity. Perhaps. But nothing is ever that black and white, especially political compromise, which inevitably has a tendency to walk into sporting arenas. The Beijing Olympics has had its fair share of controversies, the pro-Tibet protests being one of them. Even Nicholas Kritoff of The New York Times delved in on Tibet in a recent op-ed.
But perspective interests us. China rarely receives favorable reviews in the international press about Tibet. Instead of wondering if that's fair, we were interested to know if footage was available about the new Tibet China was allegedly creating. We found a taste of this in A Year in Tibet, a five part series that lays out the conundrums Tibetans face as they culturally adjust to a Tibet very different to the one the 14th Dalai Lama escaped from. Things have changed and then again they have not.
Certainly, the Chinese government is very meticulous in how it governs Tibet. That is more than evident in the other two films airing on Link TV, Dreaming of Tibet, and Beyond Fear. The human rights violations are disturbing and one hopes it ends.
