To: Tibet@ManyMedia.com
Subject: Need contact information for armed resistance movement
Date: March 31, 1996

I applaud your efforts to protect Tibetans using non-violent means. We have added a link to your URL on our Web site. However, we also want to feature a link to information on any armed resistance effort, and would appreciate a reference to that. Non-violence is the first resort, but we must never forget that society and justice is ultimately founded on armed force and the willingness to use it, not just on social pressure or good will. Your nonviolent efforts will only succeed if they are backed up by a violent effort that makes continued occupation of Tibet too expensive for China. It is the Afghan model that works. We are prepared to help support a combined effort of that kind. To the good people who fear that engaging in violent resistance will impair the moral purity of their souls, and put such purity ahead of worldly freedom and justice, I would answer that there is no contradiction. It is quite possible to engage in violence with a purity of soul. Purity is not enough. There must also be vessels for those souls, if those souls are to advance, and violence may be needed to preserve those vessels. The appropriate use of violence against evil men is not an evil, but an act of kindness and mercy, an attempt to assist them in their path toward enlightenment, and, if they fail to advance on that path in this incarnation, to be given another opportunity to do so in the next, if there is a next.

Jon Roland