What happens march the 10th, you can read in our last report. We post this 11th of march and leave the 12th of march just after having a quick look at the reactions. How overwhelming! This makes us realize that Tibet is even more closed to the world than we thought. The BBC lets us know that our pictures are the first to reach the world. We get warnings to be carefull. We cannot yet realize all this. Just as we always do, we write what we see and feel. We first think about traveling faster but we have such a nice group of friends and it is saver with 8. We leave Lhasa feeling tense. The ride takes 7 days, higher and higher, along small villages, large monasteries and eventually Everest Base Camp, where we ironnically enough are permitted as the last visitors.
In Shigatse the biggest city after lhasa, the tension gets more for us. Here we can use the internet for the last time before the border. Hundreds of reactions. Mails from all major media. Very worried mails from our families. Our blog is now a hotblog. Known across the world. Also known to the Chinese government? We use webanonymizers because the internet in China is often been watched. In the hotel in the evening there is a pasportcontrol. We get a warning that we have to stay inside the hotel. We are being focused because the other travellers in the hotel are not told this.
17 march, the day we cross the border, we leave very early from a high, cold village. Hours later we are at the border. Our friends decide that we go first through the pasportcontrol. There seems to be no problem. Steve gets his stamp. But while Ulrike´s pasport is in process, suddenly another official comes and there is a problem. Steve is requested to come back. We are asked to enter a small office. We don´t get any reason why. Some officials search our hand lugguage but it seems that this is just to pass time until another, higher official comes. Waiting for him takes a long time. We keep asking why they keep us. ´5 minutes´ is the standard answer. In the mean time our friends are outside, waiting in the cold. They are asked to leave, because we are not going to be allowed to leave China directly. They refuse, and stay. Then the higher official comes together with his helpers. They search our luggage a second time, thoroughly now. All our CDrom´s, our 2 memorysticks, our camera´s are being looked at. 1000s of pictures. Our clothes on our body are being searched too. But we are not being treated badly, even get offered cigarettes. Still, they give us no reason for all this. Even not after Ulrike starts to cry dramatically (they don´t know how to handle) and Steve says to call the Belgian embassy. ´5 minutes more´, is the answer. Eventually after all the pictures are being looked at, we can go. This all took 2.5 hours.
8 km through nomansland further, we cross the Nepali border. It is unbelievable what a relief this is. We have to go 4 more hours through the rain to Kathmandu, the most fantastic town we can imagine now!
1000 x thanks to our friends. So incredible they stayed and waited. They did not know how long it would take. We are sure it is because of them that we could cross the border that same day.
Forgive us that we want to say something more about the Tibetan case. It is not in the line of our former travelreports but now we got so involved and our blog has become famous. We have seen and felt so much that not always goes along with what the media in the west says. We would like to point out the fear that rules among the people in Tibet and that is being used to keep the people small. We experienced a small fraction of this ourselves. The Chinese government decides everything in Tibet, even what the people can say or not. Especially on important public places like markets and monasteries there is hidden control. Nobody dares to speak because the consequences are not only for themselfs but also for their relatives. We heard a young man who really wanted to join the protests but couldn´t because then he would lose his shoplicense and his family would loose their jobs at the Chinese government. That´s why young people are fearfull to go for more freedom.
But after 10 march we felt a difference. People have had enough and want to make sacrifices to finally get a breakthrough after 50 years of troubles.
Another problem is that the Chinese population doesn´t believe that there is oppression. The media are so manipulated, they teach that Tibet is peacefully liberated and only flourishes under the new government. It must be said that the infrastructure that China built in Tibet is good. But this doesn´t compensate the fact that human rights are being violated and freedom of speach is not existing.
This is why the Tibetans need your massive support. Not only to become indepent but at least to have a more human existance.
Perhaps this report will cause a lot of nice and not so nice reactions. We leave everything on our blog, because we do believe in freedom of speach. We hope that the opinions will be well-thought-out and appologize for any extreme reactions, from which we take distance.
Steve and Ulrike 21/03/2008 - 4:09
thank you.
Thanks for sharing your view.
tsering 22/03/2008 - 2:40
22/03/2008 - 23:41
nice
this was nice blog i had seen the truths being told to world.
i would wait for the free media in tibet soon as possible before china hides all the story..
tenznal 24/03/2008 - 21:50
mr
thank you so much
and farewell...
indeed, the tibetan people is a loving and peaceful people that respect all beings. they´ve been massacred and tortured, humiliated, killed outright, genocide being perpetrated on them along these last 60 years, never resorting to violence not even to defend themselves. they are miniscule next to the chinese brute invading power and violence, their culture and land being ravaged, plundered. they(we) deserve freedom and wellbeing - we all can/should help them at this crucial moment in time.
Rui 29/03/2008 - 0:22
8/04/2008 - 11:25
9/04/2008 - 4:48
10/04/2008 - 3:47
...Throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million a year from the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama’s organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama´s annual payment from the CIA was $186,000. Indian intelligence also financed both him and other Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his brothers worked for the CIA. The agency has also declined to comment.
10/04/2008 - 4:54
10/04/2008 - 7:06
French governemnt Crakdown peacefull protest in paris.
according to uncomfirmed informaiton 100,000 paris citizen was killed by the French Army. The Chinese government is considering abandond French from the 2008 Beijing Olympic. The Chinese government aruge the French government to start dialogue with the protester.
