h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dear John-the-Gardener,

As a Tibet Supporter of some thirty-five years involvement ( on and off ) and as a founder of Tibet Support Group Ireland, I am delighted to see that the subject of Tibet has made a timely return appearance to the Front Page. Your list of contact/sources is interesting, but there is a huge hole in it, namely, the world-wide network of Tibet Support Groups, such as Free Tibet Campaign, in the UK ( one of the most active ) International Campaign for Tibet, in the USA and Europe, and so on.

The public face of Tibet Support is often dominated by media-friendly faces, the Richard Geres etc., of the world, most of all, of course, by the inspirational leadership of HH the XIVth Dalai Lama. But huge amounts of on-the-ground, and behind-the-scenes work is done by the TSGs.

One minor quibble with your text ( which I would have pointed out earlier were I a regular checker-out of the Front Page ) is your use of the media clichee, "Himalayan Kingdom" for Tibet. It's true that Tibet includes most of the Himalaya and trans-Himalayan ranges, but this phrase conjures an image of somewhere similar to Ladakh or Bhutan, tucked away in the mountains.

Tibet,as you surely know, is huge, the size of Western Europe, over a million square miles, mainly high altitude desert, including the Himalayas to the south, Karakorums to the west, Kunluns to the north, and assorted ranges to the east running down into China. Most of the major rivers of South and East Asia rise in Tibet, which is why the Chinese devastation of the Tibetan environment is of such concern.

Forgive my pedantry. It's in the best interests of info on Tibet.

Tashi delek,

Chaiwallah

Hi, Chaiwallah. Seasoned greetings!

You're right; I probably could have done a better job with this. I certainly have left out a lot of friends. This was one of eleven Entries written for the project, "Tibet, Occupation and Exile" (A643862). Unfortunately, I think I was probably running out of steam a bit when I got to this one. This could have (probably should have) been a much more detailed Entry to do the subject justice. I did include links to ICT and Friends of Tibet, India.

You're also right about the Himalayan cliche. I've written umpteen letters to various newspapers and wire services complaining about the very thing. I particularly dislike the inevitable reference to the Dalai Lama as "Tibet's God-king". Really, it just amounts to laziness. It's a convenient, though admittedly misleading, way of pegging Tibet on a map for people with a hazy sense of geography.

My understanding of the h2g2 University concept is that the projects are intended to continue to evolve and grow as new contributors join in. So, if you'd care to, I'd welcome your input. There's certainly a lot more that could be said.

I also keep a page of Tibet Links (A342398), with an edit button of my very own. If you would point me towards anything that you feel ought to be included in that, I'd be happy to put it in.

JTG

In retrospect, I also wish I'd included a link to Students for a Free Tibet,

http://www.studentsforafreetibet.org/

Not only do they do some amazing work, but they might also inspire some of our younger fellow researchers to take up the cause.

JTG

Dear JtG,

Thanks for your response, and I hope you didn't mind my picking you up on those various points. Including Students for a Free Tibet ( SFT ) is a very good idea. They really do amazing stuff esp in the USA. I believe there's a growing following for SFT in Europe, but I'm not terribly up-to-date on that.

At the moment we're campaigning for an "EU Special Representative for Tibet," and TSG Ireland is particularly involved at the moment with trying to bring pressure to bear on our Prime Minister, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, as Ireland has the Presidency of the EU for the next six months, and a session of the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue takes place in Dublin on Feb 25th-27th, with senior Chinese officials present.

So we asked people world-wide in the TSG net to send Bertie Christmas cards to that effect. I know that we have to be very careful about political stuff on h2g2. Look at the fuss over Iraq even being discussed earlier this year. But I wonder if we could somehow get the idea of sending a message to Bertie Ahern regarding the EU special Rep for Tibet out onto h2g2 without being yikesed.What do you think?

Cheers,

Chai

I share your concern about becoming too political here in h2g2 land, mainly because it seemed to run contrary to the spirit of the place in the early days. Since then, though, there have been all sorts of groups strutting their particlar points of view. Part of the reason I took a long h2g2 break was because of the silliness of some h2g2 "activism".

I think DNA conceived h2g2 as having purpose beyond its entertainment value. Getting an EU Special Representative for Tibet is obviously an important issue, one worth promoting here, I think.

There was considerable support among the Editors for the Amnesty International Stop Torture campain. The debut of the Entry on torture and the h2g2 petition was timed to coincide with the launch of Stop Torture. At the time, raising the profile of the issue was seen to be important enough to risk offended some people... which it did, in the event. Still, I'd be surprised if it didn't inspire at least a few people to get involved with AI.

Maybe a good way of testing the water would be to submit an article to h2g2 Post; shazz has been good enough to include a couple of things I've written on Tibet, some of which have been quite political. As long as the thrust of the thing is clearly focussed on the human rights aspect, I think you should be alright.

Cheers,

JTG

Thanks JTG,

I took the plunge, as you may have noticed, and put a Tibet Action entry in under "Ask the h2g2 Community". So far no objections and two responses. So, stretching the rules against multiple entry slightly, I've re-issued it as a "New Year Resolution" personal journal entry.

It has just dawned on me that the simplest thing to domis also to change my hootoo ID to include Tibet. Here goes.

Cheers

Chai

Good idea. I'll do that, too.

JTG