By Tendar Tsering | July 1, 2018 |
Being glued to the television is my new addiction. And while surfing through Netflix, I came across with an Australian political drama, 'Secret City' several times but I never thought it is all about Tibet until I saw a post on Facebook saying, "the opening scene of 'Secret City' is a foreign woman self-immolating for a free Tibet."
Right after reading the post, I logged out of my Facebook account and logged in my Netflix account and started watching the Australian political drama. As indicated by the Facebook post, the T.V. show starts with an Australian woman shouting "Free Tibet! Free Tibet! Return the Dalai Lama to Tibet!" and setting herself on fire. The scene takes places somewhere in Bejing, China. The self-immolation scene lasts for a minute or so. The woman setting herself on fire and then the apparent police officials extinguishing the fire, it doesn't at all seem just a television show to me. For me, it is so real. I see Jamphel Yeshi and many others who died alive in protest against the Beijing government.
According to Australia's Showcase network, where television show was originally aired, the drama is based on two novels; The Marmalade Files and The Mandarin Code by Chris Uhlmann and Steve Lewis. Both novels are available on Amazon and I will be reading them shortly after. The Netflix's synopsis doesn't mention anything about Tibet, but throughout the episodes, Tibet is one of the main discussion topics and Tibetan national flag is shown several times in the show. Even in one scene, a Tibetan woman in traditional Tibetan dress is seen with a flag wrapped around herself. The show is sure to be banned in China but Tibetans, Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners would love watching the show and would be very grateful for highlighting their plight even if it is in the name of a fictional story.
As it is portrayed in the show, Chinese Confucius institutes and Confucius class rooms on Australian soil or elsewhere is a way not just to spread Chinese propaganda but to brutally censor any voice that Beijing considers anti-China.
The show is said to be a fiction but should be an eye opener to the Americans and Europeans. It should be taken as a warning or a forecast of China's infiltration into Australian, or American, and European politics.
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