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Monday, March 26, 2012

In memoriam

Another immolation. This time in Delhi at the Jantar Mantar. Tell me, world, how many more?

Let us pray for the causes and conditions to ripen to bring peaceful resolution to the more than sixty years of pain and suffering that brought Jamphel Yeshi to engulf himself in flames.

Tibetan operaThe news came to me as I was filming the last opera at TIPA. It's difficult to watch this now without understanding that the reason I get to see a Tibetan folk opera outside of Tibet, of necessity, is the same as the cause for which this man and others have set themselves afire.

Truly let there be an end to this suffering and its cause. Let healing and its causes begin.

It's hard to imagine that there will be genuine happiness for Tibet and her people until these causes and conditions take root.

Another martyr. Another prayer.

26/3/2012, 3:26 pm

http://in.news.yahoo.com/ahead-hus-visit-tibetan-sets-himself-afire-093256231.html

2 comments:

  1. Hi John,

    Thanks for the great updates. I am following with interest and look forward to reading more. Incredible to hear first-hand what is happening elsewhere in the world and it is a stark reminder how well we have it and some of the freedoms we assume. Thanks.

    Erik Markovs

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  2. Hi Erik and thanks for the comment. I'm back in the states but/and am still pulling together some final thoughts (well, not so final; I'll keep the blog going, to be sure, but I'm composing a kind of wrap-up to this first Indian journey).

    We do take a lot of our freedoms for granted, particularly the idea of a participatory democracy itself, which is why they're eroding. The next post will cover my last couple of days in Delhi at the Tibetan camp that was pretty much under lock-down to diminish participation in protesting Hu Jintao's presence at the BRICs conference. The official reason was to protect people from setting themselves on fire. I would have preferred the more honest response that India didn't want to deal with the Tibet issue while Hu was there. It's a complicated set of elements but India's flubbing the participatory democracy thing, too. It's quite ironic; India herself got out from under the Raj via non-violent processes. Funny that the government isn't more supportive.

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