Tibet: Murder In The Snow - Guestbook

I have visited Darjeeling and Sikkim several times and have met many refugees and the next generations born outside their homeland. I have also met the Dalai Lama twice here in canada. I met Mother Teresa in calcutta many years ago. In any religion,these 2 people are saints. I write & tie prayer flags

When I watched this film my tears were flooding and it touched me at a very deep level.

I am a mandala painter, and I got so much inspiration from this film so I painted one I call "Tribute to Tibet".

Much compassion for Tibet and the Tibetan people!

It is very sad that Tibetans are facing such issues since more than 50 years now.
The videos that are shared here are very poignant. For instance, Dolma's narration of her friendship with Kelsang is emotive.

Dear Tenzin la1. Walk-out is not a solution. MPs are elecetd to talk together and to accept the majority vote. That's democracy. There might be exceptional situation were such a reaction might be legitimate but a MP's flight ticket shouldn't be a reason for this.2. The best prevention for these sort of petty overreactions is to create the right political atmosphere and awareness in the parliament and public (!). Unless we create an atmosphere that rewards those who work hard and with political creativity, dedication and sincerity these sort of things will happen again and again. Best regardsWangpo

Now I feel stupid. That's cleraed it up for me

Thank you, at the time of writing not much detilas were available in the western press. Currently we are flooded with it.If you have anything useful to add to this, please be my guest,

That's a shrewd answer to a trikcy question

Clear, infromitave, simple. Could I send you some e-hugs?

Editor's Note: Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar and author of "The American Bible: How Our Words Unite, Divide, and Define a Nation," is a regular CNN Belief Blog contributor.

By Stephen Prothero, Special to CNN

When the Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc immolated himself in Saigon in 1963 to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem, the world took notice. Malcolm Browne’s photograph of the monk becoming a martyr won the Pulitzer Prize, and Diem's Roman Catholic regime fell before the year’s end.

Today, Tibet is witnessing an epidemic of self-immolations. In fact, since March 16, 2011, more than 40 Tibetans have followed Thich Quang Duc’s lead, setting themselves on fire to protest the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

Westerners react with revulsion to sati, the Hindu practice of widow-burning outlawed by the British in 1829, and of course to Islamist suicide bombers. The New Atheists are right to protest all this killing in the name of God (or the Buddha) – the way believers both prompt violence and justify it in the name of some higher good.

So where are the protests against these Tibetan protesters?

When asked about the recent spate of self-immolations in Tibet, the Dalai Lama has offered the response of no response. In a July 9 interview, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people said he wanted “to remain neutral,” telling The Hindu:

This is a very, very delicate political issue. Now, the reality is that if I say something positive, then the Chinese immediately blame me. If I say something negative, then the family members of those people feel very sad. They sacrificed their own life. It is not easy. So I do not want to create some kind of impression that this is wrong. So the best thing is to remain neutral.

I know it is impolitic to criticize the Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is revered as a bodhisattva by many Buddhists. But he deserves criticism in this case. Why not "create some kind of impression" that killing is wrong? Why not use his vast storehouse of moral and spiritual capital to denounce this ritual of human sacrifice?

If the Dalai Lama were to speak out unequivocally against these deaths, they would surely stop. So in a very real sense, their blood is on his hands. But the bad karma the Dalai Lama is accruing here extends far beyond Tibet and these particular protesters.

In an important article on suicide in the Boston Globe, Jennifer Michael Hecht has noted that suicides beget suicides. “One of the best predictors of suicide is knowing a suicide,” she writes. “That means that every suicide may be a delayed homicide.”

And so it goes with self-immolations. The suicide by fire of Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi is widely seen as a key catalyst of the Tunisian revolution and the wider Arab Spring. Less well known is the fact that over a hundred Tunisians later set themselves on fire in copycat incidents.

I understand that there is a tradition of self-immolation in Buddhism dating back at least to the fourth century. But there is also a strong ethic of compassion. So where is the compassion here?

The Dalai Lama isn’t just a Nobel Peace Prize winner. He is also a man of peace. It is time in this crisis that he started to act like one.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Stephen Prothero.

Footage of the torch harassing has been wierepsdad in China. The PRC government has issued protests, but the man in the street unconstrained by the needs of diplomacy has gone beserk. This isn't altogether surprising however noble your cause, it's difficult to forcibly wrest a torch from a girl in a wheelchair without it looking a bit off. The amazing thing is that there are any sensible voices left in China after stunts like that. The overall effect of the protests has been to unite the Chinese populace, from the most open-minded overseas-educated intellectual to the dirtiest-fingernailed mine worker, behind their government in the face of what feels like an overwhelming foreign media assault. Name one self-respecting country whose population wouldn't do the same.The lack of any major reporting of the pro-China crowds doesn't help persuade the locals that western reporting is balanced and unbiased, and well-educated people are now seriously asking whether it makes sense to place more faith in the BBC and CNN than their own news channels the at least we know how our bastards work theory. Detailed fiskings of western news stories are also newly popular, cf. anticnn.com. It is perhaps not surprising that it's only these newsgroups who get noticed in China but then who in the UK is aware of, say, Southern Metropolis Weekly (which has been adopting a much more moderate pro-freedom of speech stance than the average PRC citizen).