I certainly didn't ask that question from a political perspective. I'm not delusional to assume that Tibet and its people stand a chance against China.
And this was also reflected in their answers.
They're mostly concerned with ensuring that people have a safe passage out of there (having the ability to go to India and lead a life without oppression), while trying to negotiate peace deals for sacred locations and the deep Tibet. But I do think that this has been consistently falling on deaf ears. And, of course, they are hoping that the Dalai Lama will choose to reincarnate again to keep the "fight" going.
Getting out of Tibet is not exactly a walk in the park. Though, it is a walk. A long and gloomy walk through treacherous mountains which in 70%+ cases leave people with frostbite and other injuries.
I befriended a yoga teacher who was teaching an authentic Tibetan practice, and he sometimes had people over at his studio who had the day prior arrived to Dharamshala, from Tibet, through the mountain passages. It's unreal.
It's not like they have the luxury of an empire conglomerate like other modern countries, but India has been good to them.
"Tibet has an estimated population of about 6 million Tibetans and 7.5 million Chinese settlers." [0]
This is using the Chinese definition of Tibet, which is less than half of the historical Tibet. Han Chinese are encouraged to move into Tibet (and Xinjiang) to dilute the indigenous population.
I visited the 3 largest Tibetan cities in 2007. Each city had a "Tibetan Quarter". I can't see how this could ever be an independent country ever again.
The scale of the work being done to dilute the population is astounding.
We were there at Christmas time, having driven from Kathmandu. That trip was telling in itself: there was only one way to get a visa to do that trip, and all of the trips were run by a single Chinese government run tour agency.
Even with terrible roads, your can do the trip in 3 days of about 4 hours driving each. Instead they try and force most people into a 7 day tour. Luckily we got a driver we managed to haggle with and cut it down to 3 days.
Those who did the 7 days ended up staying in weird empty towns that had large hundred room hotels that were _completely_ empty, but also fully staffed.
The closer we got to Lhasa the more of this we saw. Huge infrastructure that appeared to serve no purpose other than to get people into the region.
Put all of the Tibetan Chinese in camps for re-education? You can ask the Chinese government how that works. /s
EDIT : The current Uyghur camps are a tragedy in passing to which the world is turning a blind eye. Tibet should be continuously recognized as an independent country within the world community.
Are you making thinly veiled references to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about replacing white people in Europe? I wouldn't assume so quickly, except that in your recent comment history you've repeatedly made anti-Semitic statements. I'm not gonna flag or downvote your comment, but at least have the personal honor to be direct about what you're insinuating.
Even so, this particular statement is factual: Belgians are about 50% of the newborn in Belgium. In Sweden numbers are less certain, but it's less than 60%, somewhere between 50% and 60%, so Swedes are likely to end up being a minority in Sweden, possibly a quite small minority, and the same with Belgians in Belgium.
A pure French has "core values". He is proud to be French, a bit arrogant, a bit thinking like his country is big ("la Grande Nation"), the source of all the enlightenment philosophers, that English has more than 30% of its words directly taken from French and that without French cuisine and mode, and his magnificent country for the people to visit, the world would not be a place to live, can discuss without start and end on any subject and do not listen anyway to your answers. (I think there are many more core values, but I forgot them)
It means that you can be pure French with Algerian, Moroccan, Chinese, whatever you want and have, roots. You just need to believe the core values and you are definitely French.
Sometimes my wife tells me that I am a stupid French.
You make the EU actually use French as a working language, even though German has far more native speakers in Europe and is also a working language nobody insists on using. You also make the whole parliament move to Strasbourg every other week for no reason.
But at least you are comitted to the EU, so as long as the ECB stays in Frankfurt, we are fine with your special treatment. Although you could tip better ...
The US almost completely wiped out the native population, so everyone was an immigrant, and united by the idea of a free country. That’s a form of cultural uniformity, just like cultural heritage in Europe.
How was having people from all over Europe cultural uniformity? They could not even agree which version of Christianity to believe in. They arrived as Germans, Brits, Irishmen and Italians and now they're all indistinguishably Americans, and still are able to celebrate their heritage.
Wiping out the native population is a very sad moment of US history that doesn't invalidate my point.
As parent said, all those Europeans went to America because they shared roughly the same ideals about what America could be. That's the foundation of any culture, and because it's shared it's "uniform". This is not the case in Europe, where people in different regions (never mind countries) can have very different ideals formed over the course of sometimes thousands of years
I disagree. Some went to America because of the ideals, but others went there because they had no choice (exile), or they wanted to start anew because of shady past or just because. The land of the free is a nickname that has been slapped on the USA after the fact.
Who says immigrants with a different skin colour don't move to Europe because of the ideals? That is bollocks and borderline discriminates other cultures with the assumption that they do not care about becoming European. The incorrect assumption being that it's never been the people that convert to a culture, but instead the culture evolves over time to accommodate the change in demographics. Racial and cultural purity is an ideal that never really existed. It's easy to imagine the citizens of Rome complaining about the Celts and, yikes, the Barbarians ruining the pure Roman blood two thousand years ago.
The future of Europe, and the rest of the world, culturally and genetically, is a melting pot of people from all over the world. To me it is an absolute win, especially since history proved time and time again that the more people with different experiences and lives come together, the more society advances.
Disclaimer: I am definitely biased as a European-born mixed race citizen. The more you mix the cultures, the more arbitrary those borders and ideals seem.
Should there not be some platforms or speech that is ridiculed to death? I think they should be: anti-semitism (really any racism — it has no place on HN) or even the xenophobic fears of white Europeans being displaced… smh
I think its wrong to call it xenophobia when your culture and race is at risk of being diluted and minimised into a minority in your own country. I would even go so far as to call it xenophilia if you welcome that for your own people.
In the example I gave in the original response: "white Europeans being displaced" I think I was needlessly vague. What I should have mentioned was that this displaced demographic is usually enfranchised, wealthier, educated, etc. If jobs are in question it just means that the labor market is flattening and the incumbents need to step up and skill up etc. Nobody is considering or advocating forced removal of people from their stations that's what makes this an irrational fear.
In principle, I'm willing to accept the right of countries to protect their "cultures" by limiting immigration. Within reason though: Once a person gets citizenship of a country, that right is irrevocable, and that person is as much a member of the country as any of its natives.
But it's hard for me to do that when these culture protectors are outright racists and scumbags. Which they so often are.
It was the tactic of the British into Northern Ireland, interestingly enough. I suppose it's also the story of colonists coming into the Americas as well as parts of Africa, mainly South Africa.
