Image: 19newssite
As subscribers, readers and friends of our digital activism will have noticed, our reportage on Tibet has been lacking during the past months. We wanted to reach-out and lay bare the reasons for that absence.Firstly, there’s an increasing challenge in securing information on the situation inside occupied Tibet as the Chinese regime intensifies its suffocation of Tibetan culture. The borders are sealed. What goes down is concealed and suppressed by a digital tyranny, every movement and daily activity is monitored, assessed and recorded. It is mass-surveillance and control; of a nature and scale, which even Orwell’s nightmares could not have imagined.
Image: presentdangerchina
Then, we have the reality of a world changed. Damaged beyond recognition in less than two years, by governments implementing policies which have torn-up democratic practice and respect for individual rights. This plunge into totalitarianism employed a justification, long used by the tyrant, that the curtailment of freedoms is for the ‘good-of-the-nation.’. Of course to steer a people into quiet obedience requires an extremely powerful force. Nothing can paralyze a mind with greater efficiency, than ‘fear’. To that end citizens across the globe have been subject to a relentless program of psychological manipulation that has terrorized and traumatized. Being kept in a condition of dread and confusion. by precisely engineered messaging, has produced a frightening measure of compliance.
Image: opinionjuris
So it is, that our community and wider society are fractured, while rights once cherished and defended now replaced by an orthodoxy which elevates the edict of the state to a position of unquestioned authority. Dissent is met with derision, slander, and censorship. Police and security forces are given additional powers, draconian legislation is rushed into existence, all implemented to produce conformity. There’s no critical or independent media challenging the strangulation of democracy and human rights. Indeed, journalism has become a willing conduit for the propaganda narrative, an enthusiastic delivery-boy of fear.
Image: asiapacificsecuritymagazine
These oppressive measures, engineered patriotism, state-control, censorship have worrying similarities with the default governance of the Chinese regime. There are darker parallels. Since the reported emergence of this flu-variant virus digital technology has been employed by governments as a form of identity card. Under the claim of monitoring infection spread invasive apps enable a person’s movement to be directly tracked. Cell phones have been occupied by your authorities, it is you which is being surveyed. In an echo of Pavlov’s experiments you are groomed to respond to the latest ping alert from a public health body, it is behavioral control and reinforcement. More than that in serving as a certification of injection it’s part of a process that creates division and suspicion, bringing into being ‘them and us’. Will such technology, as it is in China, soon be used to record, assess and reward approved social behaviors? A model-citizen on the end of a virtual leash!
Image: sgtreport
The activism on Tibet provided by our network is volunteered by people in differing locations and cultures. Yet since the start of 2020 there’s, without doubt, been a commonality of experience within those respective places; which has witnessed the disintegration of civil liberties and rise of government control. It is increasingly observable that democracy and human rights are in retreat. Such is nature of these troubling circumstances, and potentially catastrophic impacts for fellow citizens, that we decided to dial-down our focus on Tibet. We’re still reporting across Instagram, Twitter and Facebook but less frequently. While this platform is committed to bringing Tibet linked news, as and when required, resources and attention so generously donated by our team is directed towards a human rights struggle which is now urgently demanded within our own communities.
This post was originally published on TIBET, ACTIVISM AND INFORMATION.
