Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Meet the Hippies
And thus it begins.
Iain Thom, 24 from Edinburgh and Lucy Marion, 23, from London were seized along with two American protestors after they scaled lamp-posts outside the ‘Birds Nest’ Stadium to make their protest.
The demonstration was one of a number of protests to highlight Tibet and religious freedom which took place around Beijing to coincide with the arrival of the Olympic torch in Tiananmen Square.
Ms Marion, 23, who grew up in Cambridge and now lives in London is a graduate of Bristol University and, according to the activists’ website, has been campaigning for Tibetan rights since visiting Tibet in 2003.
Mr Thom, a grass roots co-ordinator for Students for a Free Tibet UK climbed a 120ft lamppost with an American protestor, Phill Bartell, 34 from Colorado, to string up a 200ft-long banner.
The message, “One World, One Dream: Free Tibet” – a parody of the official “One World, One Dream” slogan of the Beijing Olympics – remained on display for more than an hour before Chinese police moved in, the activists claimed.
Mr Thom spoke by mobile telephone to ABC News, saying he entered China on a tourist visa.
He said: “I’ll probably get detained by the police and then ejected out of the country but I believe it’s not anywhere near the risk or the fear that Tibetans are living under the occupation of the Chinese government.”
What an utterly pointless gesture. This numbnuts has no idea that he’s just set back his own cause. China suffered for centuries under the occupation of various western powers. The Olympics are, in a way, their means of showing to the world that they don’t need foreigners telling them what to do. Now we’ve got a whole new generation of activist jackoffs like these guys who will do nothing but stir up Chinese nationalism and turn a whole new generation of Chinese against foreigners. As I’ve said in many previous posts, the Chinese don’t view the world the way we do. If we want to affect change in their society we need to do it on their terms, not ours, and pulling these kinds of stunts are not the way to win the hearts and minds of the Chinese people.
“Look at these fucking foreign barbarians, coming into our country and telling us how to deal with an internal matter that has nothing to do with them. Who the hell do they think they are? Do they think we’re so stupid that we need their instructions?”
But hey, at least the hippies will feel really good about themselves, and all the other dreadlocked, smelly losers back home will think they’re super, super awesome.
