Dugkho, a brave hero of Tibet who gave his life.
Image: via courageous Tibetans inside Tibet
Updated 12/14/18-Reports from Ngaba area of eastern Tibet’s Amdo region of a further self-immolation protests.
Image: via courageous Tibetans inside Tibet
Two 16 year-old Tibetan boys named as Gendun Gyatso and Choekyi Gyatso self-immolated Saturday December 8th against China’s violent and illegal occupation of Tibet.
In that tragic land, once a free and peaceful nation, reports today of a Tibetan who self-immolated in protest of China’s illegal and violent occupation of Tibet. Details are few at the time of this post. A Tibetan youth, named as Dhorbo, set himself ablaze on November 4 2018 in Ngaba region of eastern Tibet’s Amdo region self-immolation.
Image: courtesy of the bravery of Tibetans inside occupied Tibet
Thanks to those immensely courageous Tibetans for getting news of this to the wider world.
Here’s the latest on our action regarding the International Standards Organization, they’re the guys with responsibility for among all other standardization, awarding and approving country codes. Which are used by the Unicode Consortium to classify and enable country flag emojis, and enjoyed across social media by folks around the digital planet.
Our letter to the Secretary General (Sergio Mujica) was ignored so we went public with our appeal and featured couple days back a post here on the issue. Within a few hours our team over on Twitter received a communication from ISO.
We took a closer look at that code (ISO 3166) and the organization states:
“As a general rule, the ISO 3166 maintenance agency does not assign official country code elements to other geopolitical areas or countries that are not member states of the UN”
Which raises the obvious question.Why has the ISO granted distinct country codes (that enable and authorize emoji country flags) to Western Sahara and Palestine, both of which are not recognized as member states of the United Nations, yet not to occupied Tibet?
We’ll continue to expose this clear double-standard and demand a response from the ISO, meanwhile if you would like to join that effort the Secretray General may be easily contacted on Twitter at @ISOSecGen
Sergio Mujica, Secretary-General of the ISO
Image:aircargonews
Subscribers and visitors to our site may recall that recently we launched an online campaign to lobby the International Standards Organization, since it is the authorizing body that classifies and approves emoji country flags. Presently it doesn’t endorse Tibet as a distinct territory, but classifies it as part of China. This means there exists no emoji of the Tibetan flag that can be used within social media platforms. As there are for Palestine and Western Sahara.
Image:archivenet
Partner organizations within the Unicode Consortium (such as Facebook, Apple, et al) follow the lead of the ISO and have subsequently not requested or initiated a Tibetan flag emoji. We regarded this a grossly unfair and a form of censorship and have lobbied those corporations with voting rights and pressed the case for Tibet. In addition on September 17, 2018 we sent an appeal to Mr Sergio Mujica ISO Secretary-General highlighting the inconsistencies of his organization with regard to classifying emoji country flags and requesting that a review be made with respect to Tibet and its flag.
No response has been received, and despite further communications to the ISO requesting the courtesy of a response to our appeal, Mr Mujica has chosen to ignore the concerns presented to him. Given the weeks which have passed since contacting his office and the lack of response from the ISO Twitter account we have decided to make public our appeal.
ISO Headquarters in Geneva
Image: ISO
We do so to better inform our many supporters and friends worldwide and to highlight what is clearly double-standards operated by the ISO and Unicocde Consortium which happily approved emoji flags for Palestine and Western Sahara yet is appeasing the Chinese regime by effectively censoring an Tibetan flag emoji.
The full copy of our appeal to the ISO Secretary General may be read here https://www.docdroid.net/jZAVRMh/isoletter.pdf For ease of reference we have highlighted key sections of the communication.
We shall continue to press the ISO for a response and meanwhile report upon and expose those within the Unicode Consortium who are blocking users of social media the freedom to post an emoji of the Tinetan national flag.
Image:archivenet
Thanks to our Twitter crew @tibettruth we are seeing some awesome action from Anonymous as part of their #Op_Tibet campaign. This week alone a number of Chinese government sites have been taken offline and as we compose this post today, another two have been targeted.
We want to take a few moments here to express our sincere appreciation to all those who are involved in these ongoing actions, the active solidarity show by Anonymous to the just cause of Tibetan national freedom is greatly welcomed.
Remember also that those individuals are devoting their time and specialized skills, removing websites that promote the deceptions and propaganda of China’s regime. Such activism comes with the risk of arrest and prosecution, since despite the clear ethical motivation of Anonymous in supporting Tibet, their digital techniques are regarded as criminal. Crazy right? That the same governments, themselves committing crimes against humanity should criminalize those who are opposing censorship, human rights abuse and the denial-of-freedom!
Our respect to those who know who they are in your support for Tibet, the dedication and expertise you devote is a major assist in exposing and opposing China’s totalitarian tyranny. We wish the upcoming Million Mask March November 5 every success in advancing human rights, justice and equality
Image:HRW
Looking at this image of Uyghurs imprisoned in a Chinese run concentration camp, one of our colleagues remarked, ‘The only thing missing is a yellow star stitched onto the uniform’. A reference to the emblem forced upon Jewish prisoners by the Nationalist Socialist Party. A controversial analogy for some, yet there’s no denying that the Muslim culture of occupied East Turkistan (so-called Xinjiang Region) is being systematically and violently dismantled. Mosques obliterated, Islamic traditions banned, Uyghur women forced into marriages with Han Chinese colonists. The Uyghur language marginalized as Chinese is forced upon school children.
Meanwhile human rights organizations and the United Nations have received accounts that Uyghurs have been rounded up and forced into what are effectively concentration camps. There they suffer a harsh regime of indoctrination and abuse that has the objective of generating obedience to the ideology of China’s communist party. A people are being violently denied their culture, which has been criminalized, racism and apartheid are driving forces in such tyranny. As they were of course for Nazi-Germany. Uyghur culture is now portrayed as the great enemy of ‘social stability’, regarded too as ‘less than’, dark resonances indeed from recent history.
China denied such camps existed, but only this week information came out acknowledging their existence, SOURCE while insisting it was all very legal!
Some insist such reports are fabricated, the product of US inspired propaganda, others defend the Chinese regime, while the haunted expressions stare out from behind the barbed wire! We’ve been here before!
Image: archivenet
Even a glance at the news streams reveals just how screwed are global politics, none more so perhaps than within the United Nations. Which this week is meeting to appoint, or more correctly reappoint (minus any genuine opposition) a number of states onto its Human Rights Council. The list of those (a few will be stepping down at the end of the year to replaced by equally worrying nations) set to legislate and investigate human rights includes Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, China, Cuba, DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq, Qatar, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Now there’s a bunch of authorities we can all reply upon to champion free-speech, civil, political and human rights, not!
Meanwhile the head of the European Union’s Foreign Policy, Federica Mogherini and government representatives are keeping silent on the ethical concerns on having human rights abusers and oppressive regimes awarded responsibility for protecting freedoms and rights.
More: HERE
