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/