Actions
Students for a Free Tibet is perhaps best known for its high profile actions on Mount Everest, the Great Wall of China, and on the Golden Gate Bridge. In March and April 2008, the group's participation in organizing protests and disrupting the Olympic torch relay was criticized by many Chinese nationals. Nevertheless, it succeeded in focusing international attention on the worsening religious, cultural and political situation in Tibet.
In 2000, SFT and other Tibetan independence groups controversially launched complaints to the World Bank against the implementation of its loan in 1999 for the China Western Poverty Reduction Project. The groups claimed that the project, to provide irrigation, land improvement, and construction of basic roads to inaccessible mountainous and semi-arid areas in central and western China, would push Chinese migration into Qinghai and "suffocate the Tibetan way of life there". In response, the World Bank president proposed to delay the project for "deeper environmental review", but China withdrew its application to fund the project with its own resources. The Chinese Executive Director criticized the groups, saying "We regret that because of political opposition... the World Bank has lost a good opportunity to assist some of the poorest people... in the world".
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“... the loss of belief in future states is politically, though certainly not spiritually, the most significant distinction between our present period and the centuries before. And this loss is definite. For no matter how religious our world may turn again, or how much authentic faith still exists in it, or how deeply our moral values may be rooted in our religious systems, the fear of hell is no longer among the motives which would prevent or stimulate the actions of a majority.”
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