Struggling to make sense of events in Tibet

Events in Tibet across the past few days are disturbing in a number of ways. My gut instinct is to say: protesters good, China bad. But despite being a part of some grand left-wing group-think nexus, the memo concerning how to respond to what's happening in Tibet hasn't reached me. So there are three things that I am struggling with, one relatively minor and two big ones.

First, those nations of the world which have made an official response have tended to urge the Chinese government to "exercise restraint". I have an issue with this word "restraint". It's a little like the word "tolerance". It kind of implies that the actions of China (in this case) are justified, but they should just hold themselves in check so no one gets hurt. The same word is used with regard to Israel, and it was thrown around during the South American confrontation this month, too. But that's the minor bit.

My second concern is about the use of violence by Tibetan protesters. Media reports from Tibet have, of course, been limited, but eyewitnesses whose stories were recounted by the Economist and the Guardian tell us of cars being burnt, shops looted, people attacked with swords. Conceivably, this is a response to police attempts to break up a peaceful demonstration.

This is important. We're not talking about nonviolent resistance as occurred recently in Burma. This is violent resistance, and it seems to have taken on a life of its own in some areas; that is, the violence is not strategic or targeted, it has become generalised. It could be that the original protesters are maintaining a nonviolent approach, but things became so heated that violence erupted elsewhere. Nonviolence, after all, requires great patience and persistence.

So I am asking myself, given that violence is effecting those people which the protest was supposed to help, at what point is violence justified? The anger may be understandable, but does it justify violence? The same question has been asked with regard to Hamas, FARC, and other groups. But more importantly, we should be asking whether, in this situation, violence is likely to be a successful strategy. For my mind, there are too many unknowns to make an assessment yet. Is it protesters acting violently, or others? What are the aims of the protesters? Is there a group devising a strategy,* or is this all spontaneous?

The third area of concern is the response of the Chinese government itself. China reportedly experiences thousands of what it calls "mass incidents" (protests, riots, strikes) every year. Its police are trained and instructed to minimise the impact of these events. This is likely what happened in Tibet, prompting violence. China should - and must eventually learn to - allow peaceful protest. No two ways about that.

As the violence escalated and spread to other regions, the Chinese military was deployed. They're calling it a people's action. Notably, this only happened after three days of violence. Again, once we know more we will be able to assess whether this response was conducted with adequate regard for human life and human rights. China's record would suggest that it probably wasn't, but we don't know.

But it is on the matter of a military response that I must defend the Chinese government. How do we expect Beijing to respond to days of street violence and destruction which is spreading across the country? I cannot imagine any country in the world - Australia, the US, Russia, South Africa - allowing violence to spread like that. In all cases, were the local police overwhelmed, it would be realistic to expect that the army would be deployed, and in all but the most disciplined of militaries we could expect that some human rights would be "suspended" or abused in the name of "law and order".

At this stage, then, and in the absence of some commie group-think guidance, I can reach a couple of conclusions. First, if violence is part of a political strategy in Tibet (and I suspect it is not) then it is misguided and likely to fail; worse still, it will likely lead only to more violence. Second, while the Chinese government should allow peaceful protests, it cannot be demonised for responding assertively to widespread violence; it is acting only as any other government could be expected to in the same situation. And what should the Australian gumint say? Well, none of this crap about "restraint" for starters.

* If you are interested, I have written about nonviolent strategy and a framework (not my own) within which it can be assessed. It's not as daunting as it sounds. Perhaps an analysis of events in Tibet would benefit from a framework of some sort.