Tibetan Protesters

I refer to the CNN article “IOC president ‘very concerned’ about Tibet” published on 7 April 2008, retrieved from: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/06/beijing.ioc.ap/index.html

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is very concern about the unrest in Tibet. Mobs are protesting for their human rights and are using violence in challenging China’s policies in Tibet. They are arguing China to “Free Tibet” from its communist rule. These demonstrators are sabotaging the Olympic torch relay by trying to grab the torch or extinguish it. Demonstrators are clashing with police and are causing havoc during the Olympic torch relay.

These mobs are a crowd of Tibetans who are in a strong emotional condition to fight for their freedom. Eventually, their emotional condition has led them to violent and illegal acts to achieve their goal.

There are two social psychological processes that might have contributed to the Tibet mob violence. They are deindividuation and conformity pressure.

When Tibetan individuals become a member of a group, usually a large group, they produce a state of deindividuation. They lose their personal identity and gain a sense of immersion in a group to fight for freedom of Tibet. These Tibetan would have felt relatively anonymous in the large groups and got caught up in the violence or other actions displayed by the mob. Even though these Tibetans are engaged in violent and illegal acts like clashing with the police and sabotaging the Olympic torch relay, their individual sense of responsibility for these actions would have been reduced because they were done in large groups.

Many Tibetan mob members would have been subjected to conformity pressure. They would have displayed violence like any other member of their mob even though in contrary these Tibetans would not have ordinarily displayed violence when alone.