China’s Assault on Everest (and Tibet)

Early Wednesday, Beijing time, a spokesman for China’s Olympic Committee issued an ominous threat:

“The command centre has given its order for the final assault tomorrow.”

He was referring to China’s climbing team that took the Olympic torch to the summit of Mt. Everest early Thursday. But never before has the mountaineering term ‘assault’ been used more appropriately. China’s assault on Mount Everest – sacred Mount Chomolungma to Tibetans – is in fact an assault on Tibet and the Tibetan people, not to mention the Olympic ideals.

Reporting on the feat, The Independent’s (UK) Clifford Coonan writes:

“Chinese Olympic pride reached new peaks yesterday as mountaineers held the Olympic flame aloft on the summit of Everest, the most spectacular moment yet in a global torch relay dogged by Tibetan independence protests.”

Looking beyond China’s few seconds of perilous glory atop Tibet’s sacred peak, Christopher Clarey writes in the International Herald Tribune:

“They could have transported the flame along the length of the Great Wall; launched it into space and back with a new Chinese rocket. Instead, they chose a symbolic gesture that, however spectacular, was guaranteed to reinforce the image of China as a neo-imperalist power accountable only to itself, particularly after last month’s violent crackdown on Tibetan protesters in China.”

And while all the press dutifully reported on the (non-)event, most did so, well, dutifully. As a colleague wrote in an email, “No one really gave a sh*t.”

My colleague – being this blog’s Buckaroo Banzai – continued:

“Wasn’t there supposed to be some amazing, triumphant live feed bouncing around the globe, like a moon landing or something? Where the citizens of the world caught their breath at the might and power of China? Ha! It barely registered a mark…. with the crisis in Burma taking the deserved spotlight, and the Tibetan uprising still fresh in the worlds minds, [it seems that the] world just basically said “we don’t really care, sorry’.”

Desperate to ensure a successful (protest-free!) propaganda exercise, China’s climbing team staged its assault with all other climbing teams ordered out of the area, surrounded by armed police, while Nepal threatened to shoot anyone who dared to protest on its side of the mountain.

So today, while the Chinese government celebrated its hollow victory, Tibetans and supporters around the world held prayer vigils to mourn those Tibetans killed in the recent crackdown.

It’s disgusting to see Beijing’s bloody torch atop Everest. Averting our eyes and honoring the sacrifice of those Tibetans who have lost their lives is an appropriate response. But also remember that the Tibet movement beat China’s tainted torch to Everest by more than a year when SFT’s Tenzin Dorjee and several courageous Tibet supporters lit the Tibetan Freedom Torch at Everest base camp in April 2007!

And the fire of Tibetan freedom is still raging in the hearts of Tibetans everywhere.