The silence of victims synonymous to The Peace of the Graveyard in Tibet

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Today as I read the goings on between Tibet and China I said
to myself, damn could it be that Dynamos officials chose the
wrong people to be their role model. The goings on in Tibet
echo the goings on in my nightmare it's as if they are being
done by one and the same person. Could it be that Dynamos
officials in my dream are looking east not only for purposes
of trade but also in terms of football ideology. Are they
copying the eastern country's virtues as well as its vices?

This is a copy of the article that reminded me of that nightmare
I gave the title, "The silence of victims."

Tibet: The Peace of the Graveyard
By El Hassan Bin Talal, André Glucksmann, Vaclav Havel, Yohei
Sasakawa, Karel Schwarzenberg.
The recent events in Tibet and adjoining provinces are cause for
deep concern. Indeed, the dispersal of a peaceful protest march
organized by Tibetan monks, which led to a wave of unrest that
was brutally suppressed by the Chinese military and police, has
caused indignation all over the democratic world.
The reaction of the Chinese authorities to the Tibetan protests
evokes echoes of the totalitarian practices that many of us
remember from the days before communism in Central and Eastern
Europe collapsed in 1989: harsh censorship of the domestic media,
blackouts of reporting by foreign media from China, refusal of
visas to foreign journalists, and blaming the unrest on the
"Dalai Lama's conspiratorial clique" and other unspecified dark
forces supposedly manipulated from abroad.
Indeed, the language used by some Chinese government
representatives and the official Chinese media is a reminder of
the worst of times during the Stalinist and Maoist eras. But the
most dangerous development of this unfortunate situation is the
current attempt to seal off Tibet
from the rest of the world.
Even as we write, it is clear that China's rulers are trying to
]reassure the world that peace, quiet, and "harmony" have again
prevailed in Tibet. We all know this kind of peace from what has
happened in the past in Burma, Cuba, Belarus, and a few other
countries—it is called the peace of the graveyard.
Merely urging the Chinese government to exercise the "utmost
restraint" in dealing with the Tibetan people, as governments
around the world are doing, is far too weak a response. The
international community, beginning with the United Nations and
followed by the European Union, ASEAN, and other international
organizations, as well as individual countries, should use every
means possible to step up pressure on the Chinese government to:
• allow foreign media, as well as international fact-finding missions,
into Tibet and adjoining provinces in order to enable objective
investigations of what has been happening;
• release all those who only peacefully exercised their
internationally guaranteed human rights, and guarantee that no one is
subjected to torture and unfair trials;
• enter into a meaningful dialogue with the representatives of the
Tibetan people. Unless these conditions are fulfilled, the International
Olympic Committee should seriously reconsider whether holding this summer's
Olympic Games in a country that includes a peaceful graveyard remains a
good idea.
—March 24, 2008


Václav Havel is a former president of the Czech Republic, André
Glucksmann is a French philosopher, Yohei Sasakawa is a Japanese
philanthropist, El Hassan Bin Talal is President of the Arab Thought
Forum and President Emeritus of the World Conference of Religions for
Peace, and Karel Schwarzenberg is Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic.

Maybe my nightmare was telling me indirectly about the goings on in Tibet.