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exiles also tell of the arrest and torture of those who still speak of an independent Tibet. They tell of peaceful demonstrations interrupted by gunfire. Many monks and nuns have been forced to return to a secular life many of them have never known. Pictures of the Dalai Lama are banned. When the Panchen Lama was allowed to return to Shigatse in 1989, he immediately gathered together a crowd of some 30,000 people, to whom he spoke critically of what was being done to his country in the name of social reform. Five days later, at the age of 50, he suddenly died of a massive heart attack. His successor remains in dispute: the Dalai Lama having named one boy, who has since disappeared along with his family, and the PRC government having named another, who is being raised mostly in Beijing.

Now, with the spotlight of world awareness suddenly being shined upon a Beijing Olympics, Tibetans worldwide have seized this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to remind the world that the issues of Tibetan political suppression and cultural erosion have never been resolved. Now, under the glaring cameras of the fifth estate as perhaps never before and maybe never again, Tibetans are trying to show the world what it means for them to live under Chinese occupation. Within China, it is almost impossible even for Chinese to learn what is happening within their own country - even Google news searches are carefully censored - but who can drown out an Olympic torch targeted with a fire extinguisher, or the cry of an invited pop singer to "Free Tibet!"? It won't be a boycotted Olympics such as happened in 1980 or 1984, but an increasing number of international heads of state are choosing to acknowledge these issues - and China's response to their raising - by choosing not to attend these Olympic ceremonies. For the question of Tibetan political and cultural autonomy, these Olympic games may be the last time a potent symbolic protest may even be possible.

What is the definition of a free and independent nation? How much history, how much weight of generations is required before a nation can consider that it deserves its own independence? or before another can decide that it should lose it? At what point of history do we make an arbitrary decision to choose one precedent of suzerainty over another? At what point will the geneological memories of an independent culture, an independent nation, have faded into dust?

* Text of this treaty is taken from the translation available at http://www.tibet.com/Status/3k ings.html (appendix). Other referenced treaties are the Convention Between Great Britain and China Respecting Tibet (1906) (http://tibetjustice.org/mater ials/treaties/treaties11.html) and the Convention Between Great Britain and Russia (1907) (http://tibetjustice.org/mater ials/treaties/treaties12.html) .

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