Pt 1: Free Tibet - Sounds from the streets of Dharmsala, India, can include chanting and music much like what we started this segment with. For the next six days, add the voices of discussion, disagreement and debate to the chorus of this place.

Read more here

Pt 2: Mexico Refugees - We started this segment with Mexican crooner and balladeer Luis Miguel, and a love song for his country. And at this time of year many Canadians may also be experiencing similarly warm feelings for Mexico, as they dream of escaping the cold northern climate.

Read more here

Pt 3: Nawaz on Pakistan -It is the country that gives national security experts around the world nightmares. Pakistan - a country with an unstable history, harbouring radical Islamist cells, with a notorious intelligence service and an army with a taste for coups. To top it off, it's a country with a nuclear arsenal.

Read more here

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Today's guest host was Matt Galloway.

It's Monday, November 17th.

Many people are outraged over the British government's unconditional support for China's absolute authority over Tibet.

Currently, in return, China will retroactively support Britain's authority over North America, India, Ireland and Australia. But not Hong Kong.

This is The Current.

Free Tibet - Reaction

Sounds from the streets of Dharmsala, India, can include chanting and music much like what we started this segment with. For the next six days, add the voices of discussion, disagreement and debate to the chorus of this place.

It's nearly fifty years since the Dalai Lama and his followers fled Tibet and found refuge as exiles in Dharmsala. Today, Tibetans from around the world gather here to join them. The future of the Free Tibet movement is on their minds, and they must decide what they want and how they'll get there. Many say the stakes at this summit have never been higher. Last month, Britain quietly announced it unconditionally recognizes China's absolute authority over Tibet. Certainly not music to the ears of those hoping for an independent, or even simply autonomous, Tibet.

Lhadon Tethong is the Canadian executive director of Students For A Free Tibet. She was in Dharmsala, India for the summit.

Free Tibet - Analyst

Britain's recognition of China's authority over Tibet could have implications beyond the Tibetan fight for full independence. Professor Robert Barnett is a Research Scholar and Program Coordinator of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia University. He was in New York City.

Listen to Part One: 

 

Mexico Refugees - Worker

We started this segment with Mexican crooner and balladeer Luis Miguel, and a love song for his country. And at this time of year many Canadians may also be experiencing similarly warm feelings for Mexico, as they dream of escaping the cold northern climate.

But Mexicans flying north could be trying to escape something much more chilling - than just bad weather. Drug related violence in Mexico is increasing significantly and it's affecting the Country's stability.

Now, the largest number of refugee claims to Canada from a single country - is Mexico. There are close to 10,000 Mexicans in Canada waiting to have their cases heard by the Refugee Board. But only a fraction of them will be accepted.

The Current's Chris Wodskou went to a Toronto refugee assistance organization and met with Mexican refugee claimants. Through an interpreter he asked them about their reasons for coming to Canada. They were at the Faithful Companions of Jesus, or FCJ Refugee Centre in Toronto.

Francisco Rico Martinez is director of the centre and he was in our Toronto studio this morning.

Mexican Refugees - Analyst

Only 11 per cent of all refugee claims by Mexicans are eventually approved. That's in contrast with Columbian refugee claimants, for instance, who experts estimate have roughly an 80 per cent success rate on claims.

Douglas Lehrer is an immigration and refugee lawyer in Ontario. We heard what he had to say about why so many Mexicans are rejected and how the refugee board members make their decisions.

The Current requested an interview with a representative of the Immigration and Refugee Board, but we were denied.

Don Devoretz is an economics professer at Simon Fraser University and the former director of the University's Vancouver Centre of Excellence for the Study of Immigration.

Listen to Part Two:

 

Nawaz on Pakistan

It is the country that gives national security experts around the world nightmares. Pakistan - a country with an unstable history, harbouring radical Islamist cells, with a notorious intelligence service and an army with a taste for coups. To top it off, it's a country with a nuclear arsenal.

What to do about Pakistan will be high on the list of issues for the incoming Obama administration in the United States. Shuja Nawaz is an internationally respected journalist and author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army and the Wars Within... a book which is based on 30 years of research and analysis of Pakistan's military. His own brother - who was chief of the Pakistani army - died under suspicious circumstances in 1993. Shuja Nawaz was in our Toronto studio.

Last Word - Tibet

Coming up this afternoon on CBC Radio One...it's The Point, with host
Aamer Haleem. It's flu season and they're asking if computers and the web can help you fight back.

Now, earlier in the program, we stood at the crossroads facing the Free Tibet movement. They meet in Dharamsala, India this week to discuss a way forward - some 50 years after the Dalai Lama fled there to live in exile. Canada, it turns out, is home to one of Tibet's most prized musicians, Amchok Gompo Dhondup. After Chinese authorities singled him out as a troublemaker, he fled Tibet and, in 2005, was accepted as a refugee here. The artist plays a traditional three-stringed instrument called a Danyan. We ended the program today with one of his traditional Tibetan compositions.

Music

Artist: Amchok Gompo Dhondup
Cd: "Natural Sound of the Himalayas"
Cut: "Mountain Echo"
Artist website: http://www.omsinger.com/

Listen to Part Three: