Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion

Simultaneously my favourite and least favourite televisual experience. This is an incredible collection of film and recollections from people live in Heaven and who have been through hell. Watching this will affect you. It's long, but captivating and it's telling what may well end up being be the most important story of this century.

Some scenes are disturbing but necessary, and balanced with scenes of the beautiful side of the country and society.

If you thought what happened to the Native Americans or slaves or victims of the Natzi or Stalin regeims was bad, learn about how Chinese soldiers treat Tibetan Buddhist monks (men, women and children) and how the Buddhist focus on compassion keeps the population alive in the face of decades of abuse and oppression.

Chinese officials put their point of view: you can understand both, but the Chinese speak with belief, the Tibetans with Understanding. Ironically, the Chinese act in a 'religious' way (think Crusades) as they stamp out the 'religion' and culture of the last place on the planet with an autonomous culture that is no threat to the planet or any other culture.

Buddhists attain non-violence by education. China thinks it is modern, but like a school-yard bully it doesn't understand how desperately it needs education. After seeing this you'll want to help China learn how to be open, so that it understands how incredibly wrong it is about Tibet (and how it treats its own people).

If you have relations in China - find a way to help them see this. Help them learn and spread the word. Educate.

This was an excellent documentary but also very hard to watch. For those not familiar with the human rights abuses of the Chinese government this is a real eye opener. Sadly many in China through years of government propaganda have come to see the invasion of Tibet as some sort of liberation or helpful to the Tibetan people. This documentary points out how Tibet was never part of China and had a civilization and culture of its own. I say two wrongs don't make a right cause of what some have said on here on how the European colonization or invasion of America somehow justifies the Chinese in taking over Tibet. I should warn people on here that the Chinese do have government officials not just normal Chinese civilians that are all over the net spreading propaganda in favor of the Chinese government. They try to pass themselves off as some everyday Chinese person. They are trained professionals in the field of propaganda. You will find them in Buddhist chat rooms and on many forums that mention or talk about issues related to china. I guess what they haven't figured out yet is how to be discrete lol, and they always seem to point to bad behavior by some other country to justify their own. Another quick mention is that google earth no longer even has Tibet shown on the map. It just shows china where Tibet used to be. For those that didn't know, google was in trouble not long ago for censoring words like "human rights", in their search engine server that the people in china used. Hopefully I didn't violate the user comment guidelines cause this information needs to be seen.

This is a great film & deserves wider acceptance.

About Tibetan Independence, I was very fortunate to spend several days at the Taipei National Museum in 1971, which had 2 rooms of exquisite Tibetan artifacts, listed as "Tributes from the Rulers of Tibet to the (Chinese) Emperor".

It was very clear that Tibet was both ruled by its' own King(s), but also that ~(naturally) the influence & importance of a vast neighbour empire was acknowledged. A bit like the USSR & (say) Czechoslavakia during the Cold War. Let's not split hairs here - Tibet had a culture and it is being destroyed.

Watch this film & Google on Tibetan News & make up your own mind.

From this poignant film, we learn how Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and their corporate socialist sponsors betrayed the Tibetan people's struggle for freedom. But how could it be otherwise, as Tibetan culture represents the opposite of the Hegelian mind control and conformity that has seized our planet. As the journalist Jon Rappoport has written, 'The one society on planet Earth which has made a monumental effort to throw off this level of programming is TIBET. It is no accident that China, which has adopted a philosophy of Materialism, has striven to erase Tibet from the landscape and the memory of the human race'.

But even more poignant are the Tibetan holocaust deniers on this board. And to think that I once thought all holocaust deniers lived in Germany and Japan! The Tibetan holocaust deniers need to understand that not only the Tibetans are suffering from the Communist government of China, but the Chinese people themselves. The eighty million Chinese who died under the Communists is no less tragic than 1.2 million Tibetans who died. And whatever America or any other country did in the past doesn't justify what's happening now. Two wrongs don't make a right----only a greater wrong.

And the film doesn't describe a 'Chinese' problem, but a human problem that concerns us all, regardless of our age, ethnic origin, gender or faith. This is not a 'Hate China' film or white racialist propaganda of any kind, as some reviewers would have you believe. In fact, it's very sympathetic to the plight of the Chinese, who are just as trapped as the Tibetans.

See this film.

I have lived in China for four years now. I see first hand how the Chinese government blocks information about Tibet. Not just Tibet but any other news they don't want people to see, they will block it. Many people in China would not agree with this movie because they have been taught differently. Text books here are completely wrong. I also see how minority groups (Tibetan, Naxi, Mongol and so on) are treated as second class citizens. The only time they are not treated this way is when the Chinese (Han) can make money off them through tourism. People belonging to minority groups are restricted in travel (not able to hold a passport and only allowed to go to certain areas) so that their horror stories can be contained. In the far west of China, there have been bus bombings and demonstrations for independence but news of this is hard to get out because cameras and videos are confiscated. It is not even reported on local news.

This is a great movie and long live the Dalai Lama.