Over the weekend I joined up with a freeze flash mob raising awareness of the sex trafficking trade and calling for an end to the practice.
The protest was organised by Adrian Greenwood from the More Praxis network, an expression of the Uniting Church in Australia, Victoria/Tasmania Synod. Many of the participants were attending the Forge Grassroots Festival. The idea was for a group to freeze on cue for five minutes, while pedestrians walked past, stopped and stared, or took brochures. It’s designed to be a non violent, viral kind of exercise that invites others to engage in their own way.
Interestingly enough the photograph here shows a freeze flash mob outside The Body Shop. Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop, was a strong advocate for the introduction of a new European convention against the trafficking of human beings.
This YouTube clip was prepared by Darren Wright, who while freezing in Bourke St had his camera on rapid photography mode.
Yesterday I came across a Chinese demonstration outside the State Library in Swanston Street, Melbourne, calling on Australians to support the Olympics in Beijing. The message was that the Western media has distorted the events surrounding Tibet. After all, the banners told us, Tibet was, is and always will be part of China.
It appears as though a large proportion of the Chinese people (Han) believe that Tibet always has been part of China. Clearly the history books don’t offer much insight into the complexity that is Tibet, let alone China as a whole. Tibet was ruled by local kings from the seventh to eleventh century AD. Tibet was invaded, like much of China, by Mongol rulers in 1240 AD. In the early 18th century AD Tibet came under the sovereignty of the Qing dynasty, with the Dalai Lamas taking a leadership role recognised by the Chinese.
In 1903 the British Empire, competing for supremacy with the growing Russian empire, invaded Tibet. Thousands of Tibetans were massacred by the British troops. The British and Russians signed treaties with China, recognising that Tibet was under Chinese sovereignty.
After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912 Tibet asserted a new independence from Chinese rule. It wasn’t until 1950 when troops of the People’s Republic of China invaded Tibet that the region once again came under the Chinese banner. The Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, signed in Beijing in 1951 by representatives of Tibet and China, established a framework in which would allow the Tibetan people the right of exercising national regional autonomy under the unified leadership of the Central People’s Government. The Dalai Lama was allowed his place in the leadership of Tibet, until a rebellion in 1959.
Simple campaigns with simple slogans do distort and diminish the portrayal of truth. Closer examination of the stories behind the stories reveals that more people are implicated in the flattening of history than we realise.
I spent Saturday and Sunday afternoons of the Forge Grassroots Festival based at the UCA Hub in Little Collins Street, Melbourne. Cheryl Lawrie (of [hold :: this space]) (right below), Sam Charlesworth (middle) and Blythe Toll (left below) worked with a team to transform a corporate car park into Holy Ground : : Holy City. I was there to talk with interested people about alternatives to standard models of worship - a conversation deeply enhanced by the environment in which we met.
The burning bush/sacred ground experience of Moses was juxtaposed with the glimpses of God’s redeeming, transforming, hope-giving presence in the cities. iPods hanging from the ceiling showed video clips of the Tianenmen Square protester, the monks protests in Burma, and the destruction of the Berlin Wall. Around the walls and ceilings were projected films and photographs of pedestrian traffic in Melbourne. This was an invitation to explore the small clues to life, including the nature of concrete, cigarette butts and shoes.
In the middle was a space surrounded by security tape, with the words “Do Not Enter”, alongside phrases connecting the sacred ground experience of Moses with our experience.
Out on the wall outside was a chalk outline of the cityscape, with the words “New Earth”, and the invitation to dream of a future life for the city.
