Jonathan Zimmerman: Give Thought to Tibet

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory."

In the early 1980s, as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, I wore a "Free Tibet" patch on my backpack. Two summers ago, when I returned to my old Nepalese village with my 16-year-old daughter, she affixed the same words to her water bottle.

And still, Tibet is not free....

...[L]ast month in New Delhi, to protest the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao, Tibetan exile Jamphel Yeshi died after setting himself on fire. "We demand freedom to practice our religion and culture," Yeshi wrote, in a letter discovered after his death. "We demand the same right as other people living elsewhere in the world."

But the world doesn't seem to be listening. Fearful of upsetting Beijing, Indian authorities imposed their own crackdown on Tibetan exiles during the Hu visit. Nor has the death of Yeshi — or the 30-odd other Tibetan self-immolations over the past year — drawn much attention in the West, despite opinion polls showing widespread support for Tibetan autonomy and independence....