Monks speaking out to foreign journalists in front of the Jokhang (the journalists were on a Beijing-sponsored tour of Lhasa) will not punished, says China.For some reason, in light of all the attention Tibet is now getting, this seems very encouraging. (But if the world blinks, those monks will be snatched right up and spirited away.) Meanwhile China continues to deal with the fallout from the Tibet protests:
“This is exactly what the party leaders didn’t want,” said Li Datong, a senior magazine editor who was fired in 2006 after an essay in his publication challenged the party’s official history. “This has become a real headache for them.”
The E.U. will have a debate about what they should say and do in response to China’s actions. Tibetans want the Panchen Lama returned, and not the one who almost got into politics recently. The Panchen Lama, one of the most revered lamas in Tibet and second only to the Dalai Lama within the Gelugpa lineage, was kidnapped by China in 1995 and has not been seen since. More excitement in Kathmandu: About 20 Tibetan students entered the U.N. compound there. They were greeted with a hot lunch instead of truncheons and bullets, however.