Focusing on the reality

Western media suffer from severe "selection bias" - or worse - in its coverage of Tibetan reality. It is not that there are no problems in Tibet or in China. It is that generally only the problems, and sometimes even falsehoods, are propagated in Western media.

A particularly regrettable misrepresentation of Tibetan reality was Western media depictions of the work of Chinese police in ending the riots in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa last year.

Chinese police actions at the time were, given the severity of the violence which claimed 18 innocent civilian lives, quite restrained. These actions were widely misrepresented in Western media, and by certain Western political figures, as a "crackdown" or "repression" of Tibetan people.

Such claims ignored, however, the reality that the riots, and the deaths they caused, were not perpetrated by ordinary Tibetans; they were mainly the work of a minority of monks who helped to burn down buildings resulting in the deaths of ordinary people living in Lhasa in a highly orchestrated attempt to disrupt the Beijing Olympics.

Tibetan people are, in reality, completely free to peacefully practice Buddhism, and a large proportion of them in fact do so.

What is not permitted, and could not be permitted by any responsible government, is the attempt to use violence, or subversion by a minority, to break up the country. This reality, and not distorted and one-sided reporting, should be the focus when reporting on Tibet.

Eric Sommer is a Canadian teacher and has taught at Beijing's Chinese Academy of Sciences Graduate School.