I refer to the report headlined 'Tibet trip an eye-opener for local medical students' (South China Morning Post, September 10) about two SAR medical students who visited remote villages in Tibet.
One of them was quoted as saying, 'I was shocked by the fact that some people in Tibet were totally ignored by the state. Despite the mainland Government starting to develop the western regions, people in remote areas are still waiting to be helped.'
The praiseworthy students who found their way to Tibet seem to be ignorant of the political reality of the country they visited. They seem to regard Tibet as a region wrongly starved of aid by its sovereign central Government.
In fact, of course, Tibet is a country under occupation. Its sovereign government is in exile.
The assumptions made by the students in describing the country as a region under the rule of a legitimate 'state' are thus fundamentally wrong.
Whatever the students might have learned about medical conditions, the most obvious sociological and political realities have unfortunately escaped them.