Image: Twitter print-screen original by @teamriddler
Anonymous hacktivists #Op_Tibet and #teamriddler have posted news across Twitter of an attack this morning on a Chinese corporation server that’s deeply involved with mass-surveillance. This latest action is part of ongoing strikes against Chinese digital infrastructures and regime websites, taken in solidarity with the cause of Tibet’s national freedom. At the time this post was published the server was offline. Our thanks to @AnonymousTibet for the heads-up on this and to all those who made this happen.
Through popular culture and news reports there’s an image burned into our consciousness that generally conceives torture as being inflicted upon an individual. The plight of a prisoner-of-conscience or innocent protestor abused in the cell has become firmly established. Tibetans know very well that harrowing experience at the hands of the Chinese regime.
The torment suffered inside occupied Tibet is not however restricted to a room in a forced labor-camp or Chinese security center. Nor is the abuse directed only at individuals and not contained to the crude horrors of physical persecution. Any tool of oppression that’s calculated and implemented to instill fear, confusion and compliance may be justly considered torture.
In that context it’s important to understand that the violations imposed upon Tibetans are not contained behind the walls of a prison. Equally it should not be thought that, beyond the detention centers and indoctrination camps, Tibetans are free from tyranny. The systemic oppression and misery forced upon Tibet also has a psychological component. There’s no doubt the emotional and mental impact of decades of Chinese occupation, and the unrelenting assault upon Tibetan cultural and national identity, has inflicted trauma, anxiety and depression on a massive scale.
The witnessing of Tibetan culture being bulldozed towards oblivion, forced relocations into concentration camps and exploitation as forced-labor have left Tibet’s sense of itself in shreds. What has happened to the Tibetan people, forever scarred by such a cultural genocide and engineered terrorism? With no escape from the 24/7 cult of China’s communist party and its glorious leader, Xi Jinping what choices are there?
Resistance is of course fraught with dark and grim consequences for the dissenter and their family. Compliance is for many the only way to survive. But there’s a price to pay for that also. The daily indoctrination sessions, public propaganda events, all under the un-sleeping eye of mass-surveillance and the ever present dangers of informers. There’s a mental and emotional cost for compliance, as it involves the breakdown of personal and cultural identity.
The societal and personal values which sprang from Tibet’s Buddhist culture are replaced by a fanaticism, and delusion. Individuality is rejected, there’s only subservience to the Chinese authorities and its political ideologies. The nature and extent of control which China has over Tibetans is staggering, not a single aspect of daily life is free from the intrusion of the occupying regime.
It is no exaggeration to say that Tibet itself is being tortured, and will be released from such anguish only when it regains its just national freedom. Otherwise the suffering will continue until the last remnant of Tibetan identity is destroyed.
The Chinese regime declared August 24 2020 that during the year “Tibet helps 543,000 farmers, herdsmen find jobs”. See print-screen below
Let’s disentangle the euphemisms and distortions at work in that wording to reveal the facts behind the claim.
Firstly the ‘Tibet’ mentioned is not all of the traditional lands that comprise the country. It refers to a truncated region of Tibet, renamed following the Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet as the so-called ‘Tibet Autonomous Region’.
Regarding the phrase ‘helps’ in reality this is a euphemism for coercing, as the Tibetans supposedly ‘helped’ had no choice. It was a dictate at the end of machine guns!
As to the ‘farmers’ and ‘herdsmen’ these are mostly Tibetan nomads who were rounded up, their animals confiscated and given to Chinese meat companies and animal by-product manufacturers. They were, like their farming compatriots, forced onto convoys of buses and placed into concrete concentration settlements or camps such as the one above.
Image: print-screen VTibet.CN
Lastly we come to the mention of ‘jobs’, not as understood in democratic societies, this is slave-labor and political indoctrination in the most wretched of conditions. Tibetans exploited to a merciless degree, prisoners with no hope of release.
These are the cold truths behind the eye-catching headline of China’s regime. In that context our title for this post is neither a betrayal of accuracy, or exaggeration.
Image sourced, researched and produced by @tibettruth
Slave-labor has long been a go-to component of the Chinese regime’s oppressive tool box. Having inflicted millions of deaths since the rise of the communist party of China it continues to destroy lives.
It’s become increasingly used in occupied East Turkistan and indeed Tibet. With growing international concern that products sold around the world are manufactured at such places of misery and abuse.
Such anxieties are of no importance to China’s tyrannical authorities who continue with mass-arrests and deportations of Uyghurs and Tibetans in bondage to Chinese run companies and government backed projects.
Each passing day that Tibetans endure the brutal occupation of their land, and in exile voices are raised to oppose and expose China’s tyrannical and illegal presence in occupied Tibet, something extraordinary is taking place.
An action in support of the just cause of Tibetan national freedom which often goes unnoticed by many organizations and individuals who are active on Tibet.
Due to its covert nature it does not attract the attention of the wider Tibetan movement, but we have been very pleased and honored to report on such activism over recent years.
We refer of course to those anonymous activists who collaborate across ‘Operation Tibet’, ‘Team-Riddler’ and ‘The Creed‘. These individuals carry out amazing work in solidarity with Tibet and have inflicted much damage upon the digital infrastructure of the Chinese regime and its corrupted corporations.
As part of that action Anonymous launched a campaign targeting China’s mass-surveillance system, and have been quietly removing Chinese servers linked with that from the internet.
Today this incredible activism has witnessed yet another such server being taken offline, reported across Twitter. At the time of writing https://182.240.228.93/ is not accessible, a very welcome situation to all those supporting human rights and freedom.
We wish to express our respect and genuine appreciation to all those individuals who are engaged in those operations.
