Monday 28 March 2011

My Tribute to Palden Gyatso, amazing human being


Tribute to Palden Gyatso

by Margo Lamont
To Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan Buddhist monk, incarcerated in 1959 and tortured for 33  years by the Government of the Peoples’ Republic of China.
Released from prison in 1992, he escaped Tibet to Dharamsala, India, home of the Tibetan Government-in-exile and His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.
Nineteen Fifty-nine
Lhasa, the top of the world
Tibet, a country of peace
      monks, nuns, lamas, nomads;
      the gentle people of Tibet
      their country occupied nine years
      by the Peoples’ Liberation Army of China:

rapes, re-education,
torture, interrogation, thramzing;
slave labour, humiliation,
degradation, chaos, crime;

Tibetan land—redistributed;
Han Chinese— moved in; pawns themselves.
Tibetans second-class citizens in their own country:
An anti-communist occupation uprising ensues.

You were only 26 the year the Tibetan people rose up, an ill-fated rebellion against ten years of tyranny.
You were arrested and imprisoned just for participating in a protest over the annexation of your country by a country three hundred times its size.
That same year, 1959, HH The Dalai Lama escaped Tibet to exile in India.

We bopped in bobby sox on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand
...while you were enduring  the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution...
And what you called Tibet’s “deepest hell,” 
 
We rocked around the clock with Bill Halley & the Comets  

...while Buddhist sacred texts 
were used as toilet paper,
while you were woken 
in the middle of the night,
slapped and kicked by guards,
while you endured the sick cold of
leg irons in Tibetan winters,
the blisters on your shins,
the chafe and cruel pain.

And all over the planet
streams still
danced downhill
over river-rounded rocks


We gorged on years of Christmas groaning boards, our tables laden with turkey and stuffing, vegetables, mashed and roasted potatoes, gravy, cranberry jelly, and four desserts,

... while you used your coveted spoon
on the bowl of watery soup
you were fed only twice a day; 

…while you lay bruised and bleeding
on the flat bare board that was your bed...

And the ocean tides 
rolled over
undulating kelp beds,
the waves 
talking the rocks
as they hit the shore


We swooned over Elvis Presley,
jived in crinolines
and penny loafers

...while you were imprisoned
and tortured for thirty-three years:
hand cuffs,
thumb cuffs,
serrated knives,
hooked knives,
electric cattle prods,
Electric shock guns (70,000 volts);
scalding tea emptied on your
arm by sadist guards.


And all the while
the tides
went in and out
relentlessly
while we lived
our tiny lives
and you
endured yours

Richard Nixon & Nikita Kruschev have their famous “kitchen debate.” 
Mao Zedong declares himself  China’s “Great Helmsman.”
 Che Guevara and Fidel Castro take over Cuba. Charles De Gaulle is president in France. 
Vatican II is announced. 
Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is released, the 16th animated film ever.
Two monkeys return from space.    Canadian Government cancels the CF105 Arrow program.
Hawaii becomes the 50th U.S. state.
First picture of Earth from space.
The brand new St. Lawrence Seaway opens.
First Americans are killed in action in Vietnam.
Bonanza and The Twilight Zone begin. Ben-Hur, the first “Technicolor” movie opens.
First known HIV death (in the Congo).
The Caspian Tiger goes extinct in Iran.
Pantyhose is introduced.
Magic Johnson, Kevin Spacey, and the Barbie Doll are born; Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper died. My parents got divorced.


1969
:    You are 36. You have been in Chinese prison for 10 years. A third of your life:

Woodstock:  we bought bangles and bracelets, sang about freedom, gave the Fish Cheer,
felt free, and unbound

     ...while you were tied
    with your hands
    behind your back,
    and suspended
    from the ceiling;
    interrogated


I went to Cape Breton;
A new sun rose
over the Rawdin Hills
and the Moon shone down
on the sea, slicing
a silver path through
modest waves.
Rain fell on the misty lakes
 of Bras D’Or.

Woodstock. The Beatles give their last public performance. The final episode of Star Trek the original series. First Gap store opens. The Boeing 747 makes its maiden flight. UNIX is invented.
John Lennon records Give Peace a Chance. He does a Bed-In in Montreal.  In Prague’s Wenceslas Square, a student, Jan Palach, sets himself on fire to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. In the same year, Neil Armstrong walks on the Moon – the Mai Lai Massacre Chappaquiddick -- the Chicago 8 trial. The first Battlestar Galactica series concludes.
Diddy is born and Ho Chi Minh dies. 

Sharon Tate is murdered and Dwight Eisenhower and an era pass away.
 
1979:  You’ve been in jail for 20 years for your religious beliefs.   You’re 46, it’s been almost half your life:

We drank B52s and boogied the night away
in stiletos at Studio 54 and Régine’s,

   
...while you wore shackles
    all day as you toiled
    then slept in them 
    all night.

The mountains bore their snowstorms
 and avalanches...the Sun eclipsed; ; hurricanes blew; Summers passed,
Leaves fell. Autumns came,
And winters: snow fell
softly on the Drepung Monastery
near Lhasa, your home
before you were incarcerated


We went to spas, cruised on ships, were pampered and overstuffed,
lay luxuriously in hot tubs and jacuzzis




...while you were squatting on a plastic bucket for a latrine,  your legs in shackles. You needed people to help you walk to the bucket; you were unable to wipe yourself after defecation

I drove back home to BC
Water fell over Niagara Falls in
a thundering cacophony
 Horses galloped over the
grassy plains of Saskatchewan
Loons called out over pristine
Canadian lakes, skies electric blue;
Bears dipped into mountain
streams for salmon feasts




Jimmy Carter is president of the U.S. The Iranian revolution occurs.
Voyager 1 passes Jupiter
Three Mile Island melts down.
Margaret Thatcher rules Britannia. 
The Unabomber.
Smallpox is declared eradicated.
The USSR invades Afghanistan.
The McDonald’s “Happy Meal” is launched
Nobel Peace Prize to Mother Theresa.
Snow falls for 30 minutes in the Sahara Desert.
Heath Ledger is born; Nelson Rockefeller; Josef Mengele and “Mr. Ed” the talking horse all die.




1989:   You are 56 years old.
You’ve been in prison for 30 years —  more than half your life.

We went on shopping trips. We shopped in Paris, London and L.A. We bought and bought and bought -- at Holt Renfrew, Tiffany’s and Harrod’s, Wal*Mart, PriceClub, SuperStore & SaveOn….

...while you spent these years shivering
in one outfit of rags: 
locked away, 
interrogated with electric prods,

…while you were forced to attend thamzings
after a full day’s work—
twelve hour berating sessions
where you and your fellow prisoners had to denounce and beat each other
or be denounced and beaten yourselves –
and always, always facing
the prospect of execution

Killer whales
migrated
up the BC coast,
sounding
and spouting;
Lazy days in the
Strait of Georgia
George Bush Sr. is president in the U.S. The Tiananmen Square massacre occurs – and the Eastern Bloc revolutions of ’89.  Ted Bundy is fried in Florida. Seinfeld premiers.
Sim City is released. Motorola’s cell phone and GameBoy are introduced. The Exxon Valdez; An Iranian iman declares a fatwa against Salmon Rushdie.  Solidarity wins Poland.
Burmese dissident, Aung San Suu Kyi, placed under house arrest.
Voyager 2 passes Neptune and apartheid is being dismantled.
Taylor Swift is born. Emperor Hirohito, Ayatollah Khomeini and Bette Davis die. Nicolae Ceausescu is executed in Romania, Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, is murdered in Oakland.

1992:   The year you were released after 33 years at the mercy of the Chinese  Government.  You were 59 years old.

While you were imprisoned
the sun rose, resplendent ,
ten thousand, nine hundred
and fifty times
And it fell into the sea
deliriously as many times;
and then
once more again

George Bush Jr. is president of the U.S. Boris Yeltsin in the USSR. The Soviet Union falls 

Charles & Di separate.
Japan apologizes for forcing Korean women into sexual slavery in WW2. The Bosnian War. The Rodney King riots.

 X-Files’ pilot episode. Jay Leno takes over the Tonight Show. Dr Dre invents gangsta rap. Dan Quayle misspells potato.

Albert Pierrepoint, who hung 608 people as Britain’s Chief Executioner, himself expires.


Palden Gyatso, you went to
prison and torture for three decades
Because you stood up for your beliefs.

    Yet fifty years later
    sixty per cent of us
    cannot be bothered to vote.


While your life was brutality
and torture, ours went on;
While horror was visited upon
a trapped and powerless you,
we went about our lives,
asleep and unaware.
And what if we had known -- would we have done anything?
Was it ignorant Dark Ages behaviour?
Was it the communists, the Chinese? Could it ever happen here?
Is that the price of revolution or reform?

And now, half a century later - is that kind of confinement and torture of our fellow man a thing of the past?  
Has anything changed? -- Have we evolved? Is it over?
Is democracy and dissidence alive and well?
2002:      Maher Arar, Canadian citizen
2009:      Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi arrested once again,
                 imprisoned under “house arrest”

And what are we doing now
      …are we asleep or unaware,
   …or still too busy shopping and dancing?


2009:    Canada’s Afghanistan torture scandal

Is this the Canada we want us to be?
We can’t say it’s somewhere else anymore
We know it’s going on…  But. what are we to do? 
And what can we be expected to do?

What happens after the knowing?

2010:             Aung San Suu Kyi finally released after house
                        arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years
                        from July 1989 until  November 2010


And 2010...2011...  Lest We Forget:    
Claudina Velásquez … Guatemala
Johan Teterissa … Idonesia
Ronak Safarzaden... Islamic Republic of Iran
The Deep Sea Settlement people … Kenya
Thongpaseuth Keuakoun, Sen-Aloun Phengpanh, Bouavanh Chanmanivong, Keochay & Khampouvieng Sisaath … Laos
The Me’phaa Indigenous People’s Organization … Mexico
Chekib El-Khiari … Morocco
The Women’s Rehabilitation Centre … Nepal
Patrick Okoroafor … Nigeria
MasoodJanjua and Faisal Faraz … Pakistan
Comunidad Indigena Yakye Axa and Communidad Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous People … Paraguay
Ibragim Gazdiev …  Ingushetia
Frances-Xavier Byuma … Rwanda
Petrija Piljević … Serbia
Park Rae-gun … Republic of Korea
Maher Ibrahim and Tarek Ghorani … Syria
Ferhat Gerçek … Turkey
Aleksandr Rafalsky … Ukraine
Troy Anthony Davis … USA
Isroil Kholdorov …Uzbekistan
Le Thi Cong Xhan … Viet Nam
WOZA, Women of Zimbabwe Arise … Zimbabwe
Djameleddine Fahassi … Algeria
Eynulla Fatullayev … Azerbaijan
Khu Bedu, Khun Kawrio and Khun Dee De … Myanmar
Huseyin Celil …People’s Republic of China
Nurmemet Yasin … People’s Republic of China
The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó … Colombia
Mohamed El Sharkawi … Egypt
Ernestia & Erlinda Serrano Cruz …El Salvador


The beat goes on.

.................................................................................................

Book  Palden Gyatso's account of those 33 years:  Fire
Under the Snow
(Random House, 1998).

Film:  http://www.fireunderthesnow.com/site2009/


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