Every Bottle Bought Supports The Lies and Suppression
Can we imagine a respected and prominent Palestinian Blogger, dedicated to exposing and challenging the oppression and injustices inflicted upon his compatriots by Israel’s occupation, promoting an Israeli company that was cynically misrepresenting and distorting Palestinian culture for the purposes of profit and propaganda? The chasm of hypocrisy and intellectual contradiction involved is too great to sustain any reasonable understanding of such an absurd position.
How then do we respond to a recent feature http://tibetreport.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/if-you-want-to-help-the-people-of-tibet-drink-beer/ from Tibetan commentator Mr. Buchung Tsering (whose Blog, Tibet Report, which usually offers an insightful forum on matters Tibetan) promoting the US arrival of Lhasa Beer, brewed by a communist Chinese business in occupied Tibet, and used by Xinhua for propaganda. What reasoning can explain the article’s headline http://tibet.ca/en/newsroom/wtn/7285 featured by Canada Tibet Committee (CTC) a highly respected pro-Tibet organisation, which trumpets ‘If you want to help Tibet drink Beer’ ?
Surely Buchung Tsering and CTC will be aware that alcohol is used inside Tibet as a tool of oppression, have read those studies which show, among Tibetans, alcoholism is rising at an alarming rate. Like Tibettruth they have witnessed the increased availability of cheap alcohol across Tibet and noted its industrialized production, which has had the support and involvement of the communist authorities. It is difficult to believe that if asked they would deny that the Chinese Regime welcomes any development that generates dependency for Tibetans, creates tensions among Tibetan families, and more worryingly, poses a corrosive threat to the social and political cohesion which unifies Tibetan society.
Yet Buchung enthuses about this beer as if it were produced by Tibetan maidens under the turquoise skies of a free Tibet, not the industrial product of a communist Chinese venture. He reported the Lhasa Beer company website as stating: “Through your purchase of Lhasa Beer you are contributing directly to the well being [sic] of people in Tibet.” and endorses that claim by declaring “If that is so, my mantra to you is, if you want to help the Tibetan people, get drunk on Lhasa Beer”. Would he have approved of the importation of German beer during the Nazi period on the claims that each bottle bought would be supporting deprived gypsy children in Romania? How can the conscience of a potential customer be salved by the alluring illusion of happy and grateful Tibetans, in receipt of some undisclosed benefit, when the oppression, executions, arbitrary arrests, torture, forced sterilizations and forced labour continue to terrorize the Tibetan people?
The Lhasa Brewery Company Limited, which produces and exports to Californian-based Lhasa Beer USA, is a state-supported communist Chinese enterprise, that is being deliberately used to promote the illusion of modernity and progress for Tibetans inside Tibet. It is not a private business in the commonly understood sense, and certainly not free from official Chinese control, it does not benefit the aspirations or social conditions of the Tibetan people in anyway. Which raises the important point that if Lhasa Beer USA was genuinely interested in the welfare of the Tibetan people and informing potential customers about Tibet, then it would have willingly provided on its website a more accurate account of what forces are responsible for the deprivations suffered by the Tibetan people. Yet there is no reference to the occupation of Tibet, no mention that communist China denies Tibetans civil, political and religious freedoms, nor that it’s the policies of communist China which have resulted in the crippling poverty and educational and social apartheid that operates against the people of Tibet.
How either Buchung Tsering or the Canada Tibet Committee can raise a glass of Lhasa Blood Beer to any of this remains a huge disappointment.
Drink Responsibly Don’t Buy Lhasa Beer
