105 self-immolations in the past two years. Zero suicide bombings. This is an excellent example of how religions give their hosts different propensities for violence.
And yet, suicide bombings and guerilla warfare in general may be more effective in revolutions. Look at the recent revolutions and uprisings: how many of them succeeded without violence? Not Libya, not Syria, not Egypt. Israel requires constant violence to maintain its nation. The US required violence and guerilla warfare for its independence. And it needed martyrs. As did Ireland. And Bangladesh. And the Chinese Communist Party.
> After the rebellions died down, more moderate reformers, such as the political partners Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, gained credibility as an alternative voice to the radicals. They proved to be influential when the British government sent Lord Durham, a prominent British reformer
(from that article)
It was not the violence that lead to change, but diplomacy... unless I'm missing something.
Regardless, it doesn't counter my point, unless you want to point out the revolutionary wars Australia and New Zealand had...
You could see it as developed through diplomacy, but the reality was that the british colonies were all given responsible government _after_ the american revolution.
The unrests in Canada merely proved the point that the empire could not adequately control the colonies and they needed to become more self reliant.
This might sound generalist, but I don't think it's fair to look at America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand as separate reforms. They were all in the same empire that fell apart.
Anyway, I don't think there's ever diplomacy without at least _threat_ of violence.
I can read Wiki articles on serial killers, but this seems somehow disrespectful. I'm also concerned because (although I respect Al Jazeera as much as any news source) I wonder if they have an agenda they're pursuing through this piece?
I had no idea there had been a self-immolation here in Yunnan (the far south-eastern point on the map). Thanks for sharing this informative visualisation, even if it is for such a sad state of affairs.
Just to be fair it seems like a good venue to mention that there are plenty of people struggling to have a decent self-directed life around the world, not just in China. Even within China, a great many Han people also have it extremely tough, not to mention other groups subject to recent sinification style policies (such as the Uyghur of Xinjiang).
Truly free, publicly practised religion perhaps exists nowhere within the country, but then again it doesn't exist in most places.
The Chinese government has a hard job guiding this monster of a country given its significant divides and economic and technological trajectory, and the various peoples of China are all struggling to make sense of and get along in what is perhaps the single largest-scale transition of a society that has ever occurred in the history of humanity.
This does not in any way detract from the tragedy of these events, however perhaps it may help to prevent people who have not had the opportunity to spend time here from taking a simplistic or single-faceted perspective or simply getting angry at the Chinese. Nothing is simple as it seems, particularly when you take a look at history.
