Rev. Danny Fisher

Beliefnet offers a couple of features today about the situation in Tibet, including an interview with Richard Gere and FAQs about Tibet with Robert Thurman. Gere’s interview in particular is well worth a read. Here’s a striking excerpt:

What’s your overall impression of what’s going on right now in Tibet?

What makes me the saddest about this is to see Tibetans so pushed up against the wall that violence is the only recourse. It’s very rare. This is not a place that they very easily go to, so one can assume that it’s that bad for them that they’ve started to lose their center as compassionate, forgiving, patient people. And it’s certainly not everyone there, but, clearly it looks like some people lost it.

How does that jell with the basic tenets of Buddhism?

Well, you’ve got to understand that the difference between Tibetans inside of Tibet who’ve been living under this very oppressive system, [is that] they’ve been totally marginalized for now almost 60 years. They’re very different emotionally. Their nervous systems are different than the ones who’ve grown up in exile. They’re very different people than you see in Dharamsala.

In what way?

Well, they’re depressed, they’re angry, they’re afraid, they’re hopeless in many ways. They seem to have lost a basic equanimity that is part of what we know of as Tibetans and we come in contact with outside of Tibet. The kind of mental illnesses and violence that’s emerging in Tibetans in Tibet is really unheard of. This is one of the saddest things.

And I would think even for the Chinese to see that Tibetans are left with this only avenue to express themselves, it’s got to tell them that they have done something wrong. Their policies have been wholly destructive to the Tibetan mind and heart.

And how has this affected other Buddhists?

This uprising is not the majority of Tibetans, but it’s an indicator of what’s been happening to the Tibetans. And as skilled as they are at transforming pain and suffering into compassion, into love, into patience, there are elements who are lacking the ability in how to do that. It’s gotten that bad.

We know Tibetans that have spent 20 years, 25 years in solitary confinement, tortured almost every day by the Chinese, who have been able to transcend it in some extraordinary way. And they’ve seen the challenge as an incredible vehicle for their own transcendence. It gives them the ability to transcend the last vestiges of ego. But these are extraordinary people who can do that.

The Dalai Lama tells a story about an older monk who escaped Tibet not long ago, and he came to see him in Dharamsala, and he vaguely remembered him from the early ‘50s in one of the large monasteries in Lhasa. And he hadn’t remembered him as being a particularly good monk. An average monk. He started to talk to him about his experiences in Chinese prisons. The monk said, “I was in great danger.” And His Holiness was expecting him to tell stories of being tortured. And he asked, “In danger of what? And the monk said, “Danger of becoming angry.”

And at that point, His Holiness knew that it really was an extraordinary monk.

It’s time once again, boys and girls, for another exciting installment of “Housekeeping”!

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First, a couple of pieces on the late Dith Pran, whose passing I noted a couple of days ago. The first is a video entitled “The Last Word: Dith Pran” that includes footage of Mr. Dith sharing his final thoughts from a hospital bed. Also included are reflections from his former Times colleague Sydney Schanberg. Powerful stuff indeed, and a testament to Mr. Dith’s rare and indomitable spirit.

The second piece, from the Washington Post, is a touching appreciation of Mr. Dith by Elizabeth Becker, author of When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution.

We met in 1972. I was a 25-year-old newly minted journalist, escaping South Asian graduate studies. In an overwhelmingly male foreign press corps, I was a woman trying to follow the footsteps of Kate Webb and Sylvana Foa.

Pran, the informal dean of the Cambodian press corps, watched me struggle for a few months. When he was convinced I was something more than an American hippie, he took me under his wing. First he made sure I had the wherewithal to do my job.

“Becker,” he said. “Take my car.”

For several months, Pran lent me his Volkswagen Beetle, free, until I landed better employment than my $150-a-month gig with a now defunct newsmagazine. When I became the contract stringer for The Washington Post, a competitor of his employer, the New York Times, Pran said it didn’t matter. We were still colleagues. We still shared news tips because then, as now, colleagues could die blundering down the wrong highway.

Every morning the small Cambodian press corps met for open-air coffee at the Cambodian military briefing presided over by an officer named Am Rong, a lovely man, and one whose name was a source of endless jokes. Pran would look at the posted summary of war news: the number of wounded and killed, the location of the latest front in the fluid war. Then, if none of the New York Times reporters were visiting on assignment, he would tell us where to find the best military story and off we would go in one of the white Mercedeses that began as limousines for the Angkor tourist trade before being commandeered for the international press corps the first year of war. More importantly, he told us which fronts were too dangerous for us.

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Our friend Erick (well on his way to becoming a staff writer for this blog) sends us quite a few stories about Tibet this week. All of them are worth a look.

Robin Bartlett, professor of Modern Tibetan Studies at Columbia University, answers seven questions about what Tibetans want for Foreign Policy.

The International Herald Tribune reports on nationalism and the Chinese response to the Tibetan protests.

Two papers by B. Raman for the South Asia Analysis Group: the first on the radicalization of Tibetan youths, and the second about Chinese police action in Tibet.

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Lastly, Erick also sends an essential piece from the Agence France-Presse about the secret trials and convictions of at least 40 protestors in Myanmar.

At least 40 protesters in Myanmar, including seven Buddhist monks, have been sentenced to prison after secret trials over last year’s pro-democracy marches, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

In September, Buddhist monks spearheaded the biggest anti-government protests in Yangon in nearly 20 years, but the military regime violently suppressed the movement by opening fire on crowds and beating people in the streets.

Officially, more than 3,000 people were arrested during the crackdown. The junta says the vast majority have been released.

But Amnesty said in a statement that at least 700 are still behind bars, and at least 40 of them have been sentenced to prison after secret trials.

The rights watchdog said its research found protesters had been convicted “for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression and assembly.”

“Three people were sentenced merely for giving water to monks on the street,” the statement said.

The group urged the UN Security Council to pass a resolution reflecting the international community’s concerns over the country, after a visit in March by UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari yielded no progress on the human rights situation.

“Rather than comply with the Security Council’s appeals, the Myanmar authorities have instead moved to the next phase of their crackdown and suppression of the human rights of the Myanmar people with these sentences,” Amnesty said.

“The Council cannot allow this to continue.”

The United Nations estimates that at least 31 people were killed during the crackdown six months ago.

In addition to the 700 jailed protesters, Myanmar has another 1,150 political prisoners held prior to the monks’ marches in September.

Most famous among them is Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel peace prize winner who has spent 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest.

She led her National League for Democracy party to a landslide victory in 1990 elections, but the military never recognised the result.