How mistrust and fear between Beijing and Tibetan are making a bad environmental problem worse.
“Tibet is still a very sensitive topic, even if your story is about the environment and not politics,” said an editor, who prefers to remain unnamed, of the environmental section ofSouthern Weekly, a paper the New York Times has called the most influential liberal newspaper in China.
In early April, several satellite images were sent to Southern Weekly; the pictures suggested that the fatal landslide in a Tibetan mining site on March 29 — labeled a “natural disaster” — might be related to inappropriate and illegal operations. However, Southern Weekly did not pursue the matter further, believing that the evidence was “still not strong enough” for them to address such a sensitive topic, although several Chinese and international experts believed otherwise.
