看了几天新闻，都大同小异。《华盛顿邮报》这篇评论算是代表了西方主流媒体的态度。一个旁观者把要点一一列出，不投入太多感情；与双方的说法都保持一定距离。
Trouble in Tibet
China's repression produces a backlash.
Saturday, March 15, 2008;
Page A12CHINA
HAS BEEN planning carefully to prevent "unharmonious" elements from
sullying its pristine 2008 Olympic Games. It has cracked down on
dissidents all over China, and it has even closed off access to Mount
Everest to prevent disruption of the Olympic torch relay. Despite all
these measures, protests erupted across Tibet this week.
On
Monday, the 49th anniversary of an unsuccessful uprising against China,
hundreds of Tibetan monks began marching into Lhasa and were stopped by
police. A second protest the next day devolved into chaos when police
reportedly used tear gas to disperse the crowd, and since then
laypeople have joined the movement and turned violent. The violence
escalated yesterday, with dozens of wounded flooding into hospitals.
Historically,
China has not been terribly hesitant to use force in quelling protests,
particularly protests advocating Tibetan "splittism." In the first few
days, Chinese police appeared to be restraining themselves, perhaps
aware that the world was watching, but since then there have been
reports of gunfire and mass arrests. Anywhere between a handful and a
hundred Tibetans have been reported killed.
These are the
largest protests in two decades, and they are part of a greater
narrative of repression of the Tibetan people. For decades the Chinese
government has afforded the "Tibet Autonomous Region" little in the way
of autonomy, and it has punished monks and laypeople for devotion to
their exiled religious leader, the Dalai Lama. After decades of
repression, monks and other Tibetans have chosen to seize the moment.
They, like others with grievances against China for its human rights
policies, realize that these few months ahead of the Olympics present
their best chance to gain the world's interest.
In light of the
violence of the past few days, several governments -- including that of
the United States -- have asked China to show restraint. The Dalai Lama
has issued a similar statement that also exhorted Tibetans to refrain
from violence. The international community should continue to urge
China to talk with the Tibetan leader, who in recent years has
acknowledged Chinese rule and asked only for greater cultural
independence for his people. World leaders should also urge China to
follow its constitution, which requires freedom of speech and religion,
as well as self-rule for ethnic minorities. It is, after all, the lack
of these rights in practice that is pushing resentful Tibetans into
extremism.