Imagine

Imagine if only 12 out of 6,000 churches, synagogues or mosques were left standing in the place where you live. Imagine if over a million plus of your people were killed.

Imagine thousands and thousand and thousands of strangers being sent to your home and taking up residence, swamping/overwhelming you and your remaining family members so that you are lost in the swarm, your voice is drowned out by the noise of a huge throng, and you are crushed by the weight of so many bodies pressing against you.

Imagine that you are, for the most part, a peaceful person whose only wish is to live peacefully in your home. You have no desire to go to someone else’s home and take it over, let alone take what they have and make it yours. For the most part, you simply want to work, practice your faith, take care of your family, and be friends with you neighbors. But you can’t, you aren’t allowed to. Instead, the things you love are destroyed, and even your voice, which you would like to raise in song and prayer, is taken from you.

This is life for the average Tibetan.

The cultural genocide that has been occurring in Tibet for the past 50 plus years is appalling. It has also been largely ignored by certain world powers—and by us in our safe comfortable homes.

It seems likely the only reason Tibet is in the news is because of the Summer Olympics soon to be held in China.

I’d like to see the U. S. boycott the Olympics in Beijing. If we could boycott the Moscow games in 1980 over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, why not boycott over China’s invasion of Tibet?

Perhaps Tibet is too small, too isolated, too insignificant for us to bother about.

What would you do if your home were being invaded? I would like to imagine I would be like those brave monks who recently stood strong in the face of impossible odds. But I don’t know if I am that strong because, from where I sit, I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to lose what I have, to lose my way of life, to have my beliefs denied me, to have my culture stripped from me, to have my family killed right there in front of my face.

But maybe, just maybe, Tibetan voices are finally been heard above the noise of those imported masses.

There have been protests as the Olympic torch has made its way around the world and meetings between the Dalai Lama and China seem possible.

One can only hope.

My concern is that China is only contemplating talks with the Dalai Lama because of the Olympics.

My concern is, like much of what I’ve seen about China, (mostly on CCTV) that these talks will just be for show. I can almost hear those in power saying, “if we can just get through the Olympics….”

My concern is once the Olympics is over certain world powers will again sweep Tibet under their proverbial rugs, pretending the dirt isn’t really there.

My concern is, things will return to how they were before.

Except of course for the Tibetans–their lives will only get worse.

Imagine.