Cry Tibet

What drives a 26-year-old to immolate himself to protest the Chinese President’s visit to India and to draw attention to the critical situation in his homeland? It has to undoubtedly be desperation. Not a dejection with the cause, but a desperate cry against the continued disinterest of the world at large to the plight of a people.
Tibetan youth Jampa Yeshi, who had escaped into India in 2005-06 from Tibet, set himself ablaze shortly after noon on 26 March 2012 at Jantar-Mantar, the venue for all protests in New Delhi. He was part of a Tibetan Protest March taken out to rally against the India visit of the Chinese President scheduled to arrive here on Wednesday. The bloodied handprint on the face of Hu Jintao in the banners carried by the protest marchers symbolised the violence with which Tibetans remain subjugated inside Tibet. The situation in Tibet has grown so suffocating that the past year has seen a wave of self-immolations in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Among those who have set themselves on fire, almost always in public in front of Chinese authorities, have been a Rinpoche, a widowed mother of four and even a teenaged student. Every single one of them knew that their death was neither an escape [suicide if frowned upon in Tibetan Buddhism] nor would it alleviate the situation inside Tibet. And yet they put their lives on the line – 22 of the 30 who immolated themselves inside Tibet have died. This, because they thought that the crackle of the blaze consuming their bodies would reach the conscience of policy-makers and those with influence to raise the Tibetan issue with China. The fact that more people continue to take this drastic option is proof that they are not being heard, rather, their plight is being continually ignored. Take our own country for example. Home to the largest population of Tibetans outside Tibet, after having allowed Tibet to fall to China in 1950, we continue to sidestep responsibility towards our erstwhile neighbours. The Monday incident at Jantar-Mantar failed to make it to television news, and since TV drives the national agenda, it is unlikely that Tibet will figure with any significance in any national debate either. Aren’t our Parliamentarians tired of calling each other names and staging walk-outs and other subterfuge to, for once, address an issue beyond their immediate constituency? Shouldn’t someone stand up in Parliament and ask the Government what it feels about the crisis in Tibet and the aspirations of a people it has hosted for more than 50 years now. Doesn’t our host-nation status for the Tibetans in exile shoulder us with some responsibility to also carry their dejection and the voice to forums that matter? But we don’t. And then try to ignore the fact that a youth who had escaped barely six years ago from TAR found little to hope among us and set himself ablaze so that the cry of his people could be heard...