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Mythmakers of the media

By Irene Affede Di Paola (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-28 07:47

While some Americans support the rioters for "Tibet independence", they forget what their ancestors did to local Indians. Their European forefathers migrating to the New World not only massacred the Indians but also devastated their culture.

It's really a pity that the notions of "good Westerners" and "other bad people" which should have only appeared in Hollywood films exist in the real world. s

To my knowledge, the United States hasn't done any better than any other country on human rights. Following the slaughter of local aboriginals by the early Americans, some other minorities including the black people, Italians, Spaniards, especially the colored people, have been discriminated against in the US society as well.

Please don't forget how many Vietnamese were killed by the US army in the war in the 1960s and how many democratic Latin American governments were toppled by US plots.

Newly released figures show that the Iraq War claimed more than 700,000 Iraqi civilian lives, and that more than 2.7 million Iraqi refugees have fled into Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and other countries. Who will compensate for the sufferings of the Iraqi victims and refugees?

It is doubtful if some Westerners truly care about the Chinese people's human rights, while they turn a blind eye to what the US is doing to the Iraqi people. It is also absurd of them to point a finger at China's domestic affairs.

It is widely known that lobbying groups and the super corporations behind them exert great influence on the US government's decision-making.

About 18 years ago, the American linguist Avram Noam Chomsky said the US was a society in which the poor paid for the rich.

What I want to stress further is that, the poor are misguided as if they can get rich by exploiting those even poorer. This trick is a popular "market law" in the US society.

In fear of a rapidly developing China, some Westerners want to raise the Tibet issue on the pretext of human rights.

Generally speaking, those Westerners don't really care about Tibet and its people's human rights. In fact, it has nothing to do with human rights; it is nothing but a conspiracy to split another country and to contain a potential competitor.

Created by the Western media, the Tibet myth thus became an ideal instrument to try and achieve that aim.

Those Westerners accuse China on the issue of Tibet so as to shift public attention away from their atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan. They criticize China on "human rights violations", while spreading "democratic" torture and cruelty around the world.

They appear to be lovers of peace only because they have learned to divert violence into other places. The West has used violence so many times in the past 500 years that their purpose seems to have been achieved.

The recent propaganda by the Western media and its censure of China and the Chinese people is intolerable. We have experienced the Cold War era when extreme actions were taken. We also understand the potential consequences of the Western media's irrational attitude toward China.

As some NATO generals have said, "As Westerners, we cannot afford to support absurd things like this because, as it happened in Kosovo, it might cause more tensions and even bring disaster to ourselves."

I do not understand why some Westerners are bent on making Tibet an "independent and free country".

Try imagining an independent Tibet located on the world's roof and isolated from the global economy and you wonder what the future of Tibet would be like.

Those Westerners want to keep Tibet from developing. They insist that Tibet should be kept independent and isolated and its people should go on with their daily life as herdsmen or farmers.

So when those Westerners go there on vacation, they can enjoy the beautiful scenery and the primitive life of their imagination of a mystical Oriental place.

Matteo Ricci, one of the pioneers of East-West exchanges, came to China during the Wanli Reign of the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644). On ethnic diversity, he said, "Observe all and obtain its advantages."

Paul the Apostle, the forerunner of Christianity, echoed him by calling on everyone to "respect non-Christian people."

Any problem can be solved if we bear their words in mind.

The author is a professor at the University of Insubria in Italy The article first appeared in the Global Times

(China Daily 05/28/2008 page9)