"We must patiently wait for China to change and hope the Tibetan people will keep calm. Because one does not do a revolution if one hasn’t any hope of winning, and this is neither the right time nor the right method. It is David against Goliath. What can such a small people as the Tibetans do before the thousands, millions of soldiers they might send?". This is the opinion expressed to SIR by father Augusto Luca, a missionary of Saint Francis Xavier and an expert in Tibetan problems. In the meantime, after the riots with police started last Friday in Lhasa, the capital of the self-governing province of Tibet, there are news of hundreds of victims, while the official balance stops at 13, with dozens of people wounded and 300 buildings burnt up. According to father Augusto in an interview at old.agensir.it -, "perhaps the time of the insurrection is the wrong one, just before the Olympic Games, which are an window open on the world. Because now China will carry out a powerful repression everywhere. More than Tibet, China is scared of the riots in the regions inhabited by Chinese Muslims and of terrorist attacks during the Olympic Games. If one does a revolution now, there can be but repression, from a political point of view. At some other time, without all the world’s eyes on to them, there might have been some room for negotiations, but that’s hardly the case now". (continued)
