the chinese people are as oppressed as the tibetans

Stephen makes the point that

The people of Tibet and China are oppressed by the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC). While it may appear odd to say, there is as much of a case for a Free China movement as a Free Tibet movement....

The Chinese people are just as disenfranchised as the Tibetans, and both are suffering under the same dictatorship. The difference is that the Chinese people's oppressor is 'their' own nation, the Tibetans' another. That does not make their oppression any better than the oppression of the Tibetans.

Tibet and China are not enemies, with the latter oppressing the former. They are both suffering under the same oppression, that of the PRC government. It is important to remember that nations must respect the inherent rights of their citizens - their rights as a state do not come before their citizens' rights as individuals. The individual rights of both the Tibetans and Chinese (along with other territories) are being violated, and the campaign against that oppression should not be limited to a romantic geographical area. The PRC state is distinct from the Chinese people, and the PRC state is the real enemy - not China. Those banners should really read "PRC government - stop killing" rather than ignoring the plight of the Chinese themselves. We should not boycott the Chinese Olympics because of the oppression of Tibet - if they are to be boycotted, they should be boycotted because of the oppression of all those suffering under PRC tyranny.

I've felt very unhappy at the sight of Tibetans attacking Han Chinese in Lhasa, both because I oppose the use of violence but also because (having listened to the limited understanding of the situation and the history of Tibetan history both on-line and among young Chinese I have met recently) it is obvious that the censorship and iron hand within China only feeds their populace with a distorted and expedient version of events. We just need to look back to the Tianenmen Square protest to see what the Chinese government do to Chinese dissenters. And, before that, the history of life, and death, under Mao:

....Mao’s first political campaigns after founding the People’s Republic were land reform and the suppression of counter-revolutionaries, which centered on mass executions, often before organized crowds. These campaigns of mass repression targeted former KMT officials, businessmen, former employees of Western companies, intellectuals whose loyalty was suspect, and significant numbers of rural gentry. The U.S. State department in 1976 estimated that there may have been a million killed in the land reform, 800,000 killed in the counterrevolutionary campaign. Mao himself claimed a total of 700,000 killed during the years 1949–53. However, because there was a policy to select "at least one landlord, and usually several, in virtually every village for public execution", 1 million deaths seems to be an absolute minimum, and many authors agree on a figure of between 2 million and 5 million dead.

In addition, at least 1.5 million people were sent to "reform through labour" camps. Mao’s personal role in ordering mass executions is undeniable. He defended these killings as necessary for the securing of power.......

The Hundred Flowers movement led to the condemnation, silencing, and death of many citizens, also linked to Mao's Anti-Rightist Movement, with death tolls possibly in the millions.......

Under the Great Leap Forward, Mao and other party leaders ordered the implementation of a variety of unproven and unscientific new agricultural techniques by the new communes.......
in an effort to win favour with their superiors and avoid being purged, each layer in the party hierarchy exaggerated the amount of grain produced under them and based on the fabricated success, party cadres were ordered to requisition a disproportionately high amount of the true harvest for state use primarily in the cities and urban areas but also for export. The net result, which was compounded in some areas by drought and in others by floods, was that the rural peasants were not left enough to eat and many millions starved to death in what is thought to be the largest famine in human history. This famine was a direct cause of the death of tens of millions of Chinese peasants between 1959 and 1962. Further, many children who became emaciated and malnourished during years of hardship and struggle for survival, died shortly after the Great Leap Forward came to an end in 1962........
The first attempt to analyse this data in order to estimate the number of famine deaths was carried out by American demographer Dr Judith Banister and published in 1984. Given the lengthy gaps between the censuses and doubts over the reliability of the data, an accurate figure is difficult to ascertain. Nevertheless, Banister concluded that the official data implied that around 15 million excess deaths incurred in China during 1958-61 and that based on her modelling of Chinese demographics during the period and taking account of assumed underreporting during the famine years, the figure was around 30 million. The official statistic is 20 million deaths, as given by Hu Yaobang. Various other sources have put the figure between 20 and 72 million...... During the Cultural revolution.....

Millions of lives were ruined during this period, as the Cultural Revolution pierced into every part of Chinese life, depicted by such Chinese films as To Live, The Blue Kite and Farewell My Concubine. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, perished in the violence of the Cultural Revolution. When Mao was informed of such losses, particularly that people had been driven to suicide, he blithely commented: "People who try to commit suicide — don't attempt to save them! . . . China is such a populous nation, it is not as if we cannot do without a few people

:: link There is much to commend it in looking to the good of the many rather than being part of the celebration of self-interest....but not when it leads to excesses and callousness, lack of human rights, like this.