We’ve been hearing rumors to this effect for a while now — monks are locked in monasteries in Tibet. No supplies going in, nothing coming out. The monks are now said to be facing “patriotic re-education.”

A peaceful protest turned into a riot, and China couldn’t handle it. Maybe the world will actually get a message through to China on this: If you want to host the world in your country this summer, you will be scrutinized.

A profile of two Korean poets who were called unpatriotic for practicing Japanese forms of poetry.

Like other Koreans who grew up under Japanese colonial rule, from 1910 to 1945, Son and Rhee learned Japanese, rather than Korean, at school. When the Japanese withdrew after their defeat in World War II, many of these Koreans found themselves without a true mother tongue - ashamed to speak Japanese but unable to read Korean well.

But unlike others, Rhee and Son maintained their love of Japanese poetry long after the liberation.

For that, they paid a price: a lifetime of disregard or disapproval from fellow Koreans.

(And North Korea test-fired more missiles. The U.S. called the test “not helpful.” There is a deadlock over what will happen with North Korea’s nukes. Seems Kim Jong-Il wants the world’s attention back on him. What good is it being in the Axis of Evil if you have to fire a missile to get a headline?)

Monks speaking out to foreign journalists in front of the Jokhang (the journalists were on a Beijing-sponsored tour of Lhasa) will not punished, says China.For some reason, in light of all the attention Tibet is now getting, this seems very encouraging. (But if the world blinks, those monks will be snatched right up and spirited away.)

Meanwhile China continues to deal with the fallout from the Tibet protests:

“This is exactly what the party leaders didn’t want,” said Li Datong, a senior magazine editor who was fired in 2006 after an essay in his publication challenged the party’s official history. “This has become a real headache for them.”

The E.U. will have a debate about what they should say and do in response to China’s actions.

Tibetans want the Panchen Lama returned, and not the one who almost got into politics recently. The Panchen Lama, one of the most revered lamas in Tibet and second only to the Dalai Lama within the Gelugpa lineage, was kidnapped by China in 1995 and has not been seen since.

More excitement in Kathmandu: About 20 Tibetan students entered the U.N. compound there. They were greeted with a hot lunch instead of truncheons and bullets, however.

Here’s a real clue as to what’s going on inside China: The government is stirring up hatred of Tibetans, which is what is always done in war. Meanwhile Chinese dissident Wang Lixiong (married to a Tibetan and recently featured in the New York Review of Books [subscription needed to read]) has made a bold call for peace.

Last weekend, when the Chinese government starting filling the nation’s homes with seemingly non-stop televised images of Tibetan rioters pillaging and killing in the streets of Lhasa, Wang worried about the spiral of hatred being stirred up.

He and a group of friends – Chinese writers, scholars, artists and lawyers – drafted a petition calling on the government to dial down the rhetoric, reflect on its policies and deal directly – and peacefully – with Tibetans’ leader-in-exile.

The petition also called on Tibetans not to engage in violence.

A well-known novelist and environmentalist, Wang was the petition’s first signatory.

“Too many people are being inspired by propaganda now to hate the Tibetan people,” he says.