How come Zimbabwe and Tibet get all the attention?

There is no question that the struggle over land and power in Zimbabwe has brought the country to a grim pass. Nearly a decade after the takeover of white-owned farms and the rupture with the west, economic breakdown, hyperinflation, sanctions and Aids have taken a heavy toll. With the expectation now that a second round of elections, mired in claims of fraud, may after all keep President Mugabe in power, the prospect must be of continued economic punishment and crisis.

On a different scale, there's also no doubt that in Tibet - the other central international focus of western concern in the past month - deep-seated popular discontent fuelled last month's anti-government protests and attacks on Han Chinese, which were met with a violent crackdown by the Chinese authorities. Certainly, given the intensity of the US and European response, from chancellors and foreign ministers to Hollywood stars and blanket media coverage, you'd be left in little doubt that these two confrontations were the most serious facing their continents, if not the world.

The US ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, said as much this week when he declared Zimbabwe the "most important and urgent issue" in Africa. Gordon Brown and George Bush both denounced the delay in releasing election results, the prime minister declaring that the "international community's patience with the regime is wearing thin". The British media have long since largely abandoned any attempt at impartiality in its reporting of Zimbabwe, the common assumption being that Mugabe is a murderous dictator at the head of a uniquely wicked regime.

China's growing economic muscle means western leaders prefer to tread more carefully around its human rights record, but Angela Merkel and the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, were not shy about steaming in, along with the US presidential candidates and the House of Representatives, which demanded unconditional talks with the exiled Dalai Lama. Meanwhile, any official restraint was more than made up for by a string of Dalai Lama-dazzled celebs from Richard Gere to Ab Fab's Joanna Lumley, who proudly recalled that her father had once helped Tibet against China on behalf of the British Raj.

But, on the basis of the scale of violence, repression and election rigging alone, you would be hard put to explain why these conflicts have been singled out for such special attention. In the violence surrounding Zimbabwe's elections, two people are currently reported to have died; in Tibet, numbers estimated to have been killed by protesters and Chinese forces range from 22 to 140. By contrast, in Somalia, where US-backed Ethiopian and Somali troops are fighting forces loyal to the ousted government, several thousand have been killed since the beginning of the year and half the population of the capital, Mogadishu, has been forced to flee the city in what UN officials describe as Africa's worst humanitarian crisis.

When it comes to rigging elections, countries like Jordan and Egypt have been happy to oblige in recent months - in the Egyptian case, jailing hundreds of opposition activists into the bargain - and almost nobody in the west has batted an eyelid. In Saudi Arabia there are no national elections at all, let alone the opposition MPs and newspapers that exist in Zimbabwe. In Africa, Togo has been a more flagrant rigger, while in Cameroon last week the president was given the job for life. And when it comes to separatist and independence movements, the Turkish Kurds have faced far more violence and a tighter cultural clampdown than the Tibetans.

The crucial difference, of course, and the reason why these conflicts and violations don't get the deluxe media and political treatment offered to the Zimbabwean opposition or Tibetan separatists is that the governments involved are all backed by the west, compounded in the Zimbabwean case by a transparently racist agenda. But it's not just an issue of hypocrisy and double standards, egregious though they are. It's also that British and US involvement and interference have been crucial to both the Zimbabwean and Tibetan conflicts.

That's most obviously true in Zimbabwe, which was not just a British colony, but where Britain refused to act against a white racist coup, triggering a bloody 15-year liberation war, and then imposed racial parliamentary quotas and a 10-year moratorium on land reform at independence. The subsequent failure by Britain and the US to finance land buyouts as expected, along with the impact of IMF programmes, laid the ground for the current impasse.

As for Tibet, Britain's role in the former serf-based system (helpfully recalled by Lumley) was assumed after the communist takeover by the CIA, which bankrolled the Dalai Lama's operations for many years. Such arrangements have in recent years passed to other US agencies and western NGOs, as with the Zimbabwean opposition. And even if there is no prospect of Tibetan independence, for a US administration that has designated China as the main threat to its global dominance, its minorities are still a stick that can be used to poke the dragon.

What has made human rights edicts by the US and Britain since the launch of the "war on terror" even more preposterous is that not only are they themselves supporting governments with similar or worse records, but they are directly responsible for these outrages themselves: from illegal invasions and occupations to large-scale killing and torture - along with phoney elections - in Iraq and Afghanistan. The UN estimates that more than 700 people were killed in the recent US and British-backed attacks on the Mahdi army in Iraq - a central motive for which was to stop them taking part in elections.

The current focus on China is of course linked to the Olympics, and Britain must face the likelihood of large-scale protests over its own record in 2012. Meanwhile, the best chance both of settling the Zimbabwean crisis and of meeting Tibetan aspirations is without the interference of western powers, which would do better improving the human rights records of their allies and themselves. The days of colonial dictat are over and where attempts are made to revive them, they will be resisted. China is now an emerging global power - and, as the Zimbabwean ambassador to the UN said yesterday, Zimbabwe "is no longer a British colony".

s.milne@guardian.co.uk

为何单单津巴布韦和西藏受到如此”礼遇“？

津巴布韦发生的对土地和权利的争夺战已经将这个国家拖入到一个毋庸置疑的危险境地。在长达十年的过程中，津巴布韦实施没收白人农场主土地的政策，并与西方决裂。现如今，经济崩溃，通货膨胀， 国际制裁和艾滋泛滥已经给这个国家造成巨大损失。进行着的选举，正在舞弊丑闻中泥潭深陷。在第二轮选举中，如不出意料，总统穆加贝仍然会继续把持政权。 其前景必定是继续受到经济危机的惩罚。

虽然规模不一样， 但毫无疑问西藏是另外一个令西方瞩目的焦点， 过去一个月中，深藏于心的广泛不满演变成反政府的抗议和对中国汉族的攻击。 中国政府对此暴力镇压。从美国和欧洲对此事的反应强度， 从内阁大臣和外交部长到好莱坞明星， 媒体地毯式轰炸， 爬梳剔块。毫无疑问的会让你觉得，这两起对抗事件是应该是全球，至少也是其所在大洲所面临的最严重的问题。

美国驻联合国大使 Zalmay Khalilzad 多次重申津巴布韦是非洲大陆面临的“最严重最迫切的问题”。 布朗和布什一起谴责了故意拖延披露选举结果的做法。英国首相说“国际社会对该国政权的耐心几乎已磨耗殆尽". 英国媒体早已摒弃了对津巴布韦怀有偏见的报道，但仍然一致认为穆加贝是一个独一无二的邪恶政权的嗜杀的独裁者。 

中国的强大经济实力使得西方领导人对其人权记录的批评更为小心谨慎。 但是 Angela Merkel 和英国外交秘书 David Miliband, , 连同美国总统候选人和院会议员一起, 毫无顾忌的公然参与此事,  号召 无条件的与流亡的达赖喇嘛展开对话. 与此同时，相对于官方的克制， 哪些达赖的明星拥趸对此事的反应更为激烈   从 李察吉尔 到 Lumley ，  Lumley 甚至公然无比骄傲的回忆起她的父亲在英国殖民时期曾帮助西藏人抵抗中国的占领 的光辉历史 。

但是从这两起事件涉及到的暴力，经济萧条，和选举舞弊程度来看,很难解释为什么他们会脱颖而出吸引全球瞩目.  津巴布韦 因为选举而引发的暴利冲突迄今只造成两人死亡. 在西藏，因为抗议者而军队间定冲突而造成的死亡人数大约在２２－１４０之间 . 与此鲜明对照的是，在索马里, 美国政府支持的 埃塞俄比亚和索马里军队 正与忠于被驱逐政府的武装展开激战, 从年初开始，这场战争已夺去了数千人的生命，半数的首都居民已逃离这座城市. 联合国官员形容这是“非洲最严重的人道主义危机”

谈到选举舞弊，约旦和埃及在这几个月里应该感到由衷的感激. 在埃及，数百名异议人士被拘压，西方对此甚至都 懒得 瞟一眼。在沙特阿拉伯，根本就没有全国选举，更别提象 津巴布韦国内 那样的反对党和反对媒体了。在非洲，刚果的选举舞弊更臭名昭著. 上个星期， 喀麦隆 的总统为了活命只好让出了总统宝座。谈到分离主义分子和独立运动, 土耳其的 库尔德人 面临着残酷的暴 力 和文化灭绝，这比西藏所面临的问题要残酷得多

为什么这些冲突和动荡并没有和 津巴布韦 与 西藏 一样获得同样的媒体关注和政治反响，关键的区别和理由在于那些政府都与西方有千丝万缕的联系或是直接受西方的支持 ,再加上津巴布韦发生的事件产生于非常的透明的种族议事日程之下。但是这并不仅仅是一个伪善或双重标准的问题， 尽管西方的伪善与双重标准已经是臭名昭著--这更是英国和美国在津巴布韦和西藏发生的冲突中积极参与和干涉。

我们可以从津巴布韦的事件中很清晰的看到这一点。津巴布韦曾经是英国的殖民地， 但是英国却拒绝反对由白人种族主义者发动的政变。这次政变引起了长达15年的血腥战争, 议会中的种族配额和为期10年的土地改革。英国和美国在为土地买卖提供金融支持上的作为消极，让随后的改革失败合情合理。而且他们对国际货币基金项目施加影响，致使津巴布韦局势陷于目前的僵局。

关于西藏，在共产党接管西藏之后， 英国政府在这个农牧制的体系的地位已经被CIA取代。长期以来，CIA为达赖喇嘛的行动提供财政支持。他们之间的勾结，还有与津巴布韦的反对势力之间的合作，最近已经被美国的一些情报单位和西方的非政府组织所披露。美国认为中国是其全球霸主的主要威胁，所以利用这些少数势力来戳一戳中国巨龙也还是很有用处。

自从’反恐“战争以来，美英两国不仅支持那些人权记录同样糟糕或者更加恶劣的政府，他甚至直接参与破坏人权： 从非法入侵和占领到大规模的杀戮和酷刑-再算上伊拉克和阿富汗做戏般的选举。联合国估计在美英联军在对伊拉克马哈迪武装的袭击中已造成超过700人死亡-袭击的理由是阻止其参加选举。

最近对中国事件的焦点关注当然与奥运会有关，那么英国2002也必须面临对其不良记录的大规模抗议。而同时， 解决津巴布韦和西藏问题最好的机会在于将西方势力排除在外，并由他们自己和其伙伴的努力下改善人权。独裁殖民统治的时代已经一去不复返，任何卷土重来的企图也必定徒劳。现在中国是一个正在崛起的全球实力，同时，津巴布韦驻联合国外交大使昨天表示津巴布韦“再也不是英国的殖民地”。