Sky Burial: An Eyewitness Account of China's Brutal Crackdown in Tibet: Volume 3 - Softcover

Kerr, Blake

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1466477571 ISBN 13: 9781466477575

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011

Synopsis

Sky Burial is the remarkable story of a young American physician who witnesses the largest independence demonstrations in Lhasa since China entered Tibet in 1949. After graduating from medical school, Blake Kerr hitch-hiked across the Tibetan Plateau with a college friend, John Ackerly, and trekked as high as they could on the Tibetan side of Everest in sneakers. Before returning to Lhasa, there were glimpses of China's occupation: Tibetan children unable to learn Tibetan in Chinese schools; Buddhist monks at monasteries who were "tour guides in a museum;" and Tibetans in cities outnumbered by a majority of Chinese immigrants. On October 1st 1987, China's National Day, monks chanting "Free Tibet" prompted thousands of Tibetans to demonstrate. Dr. Kerr documented 12 deaths when Chinese police opened fire on unarmed Tibetan men, women and children. Sneaking out to treat the wounded who hid in their homes and monasteries, Dr. Kerr also met the victims of torture and forced sterilization. After being arrested and escaping to Kathmandu, Dr. Kerr's and Mr. Ackerly's testimony of the riots in Lhasa led to international condemnation of China's crackdown in Tibet. Both men have since become activists committed to ending China's military occupation of Tibet. Mr. Ackerly worked as president of the International Campaign for Tibet for 20 years. Dr. Kerr has journeyed to Tibetan refugee camps in India, and conducted on site investigations in Tibet of China's torture of Tibetan political prisoners, and China's National Family Planning Policy of coerced abortion, sterilization and infanticide. Sky Burial's unprecedented, first-hand accounts of Tibetans struggling for freedom in their Land of Snows articulates why many Tibetans fear that the Chinese are trying to end their race.

About this title

Review

KIRKUS REVIEWS

The sky burial is the ancient Tibetan ceremony in which a corpse, hacked to pieces, is left on a mountainside to be eaten by vultures.  It’s also Kerr’s metaphor for Tibet’s plundering by China, which—as detailed in this adventure story with teeth—he saw firsthand when his lark of a Himalayan mountain-climbing spree turned unexpectedly bloody.

In 1987, the author, a young physician, traveled with his old Dartmouth pal John Ackerly, a lawyer, to Tibet by way of China in order to “climb as high as we could on the Tibetan side of Everest.”  Despite a few ominous foreshadowings—the “thunder” they heard upon first glimpsing Lhasa’s Potala Palace, ancestral home of the Dalai Lamas, turned out to be Chinese artillery—the pair’s early days in Tibet (and the first third of this account) were devoted to adventure, as they tackled Everest in madcap style, wearing sneakers but making it all the way up to Camp Three (of Six) despite nasty brushes with altitude sickness.  But back in the streets of Lhasa—streets dirtied by raw sewage and prowled by mongrel dogs (whom the Tibetans believe to be reincarnated monks-gone-astray)—the adventure turned dangerous when, on October 1, Chinese National Day, Tibetans amassed in protest against the Chinese occupation and were fired upon by Chinese police, who killed several.  Swept up, Kerr threw stones at cops, then went into hiding, tending wounded Tibetans and collecting stories of Chinese torture and forced sterilization of Tibetans.  With Ackerly, he then traveled south to India, where he met the Dalai Lama, who told him that “the Chinese are wonderful people.  It is their government that makes trouble.”  Kerr’s account ends with his 1991 return to Tibet, where he found conditions still “bleak,” and the Chinese occupation “having a genocide effect on the Tibetans.”

A potent blend of high adventure and moral polemic, and yet further testimony to the ongoing tragedy of Shangri-La.
LIBRARY JOURNAL

Upon completing medical studies in 1987, Kerr persuaded a Dartmouth undergraduate friend to accompany him to Tibet.  The first third of this well-written book describes their travels in Tibet as backpackers and concluded with an account of briefly joining an American expedition on the north face of Mount Everest.  Then Kerr recounts his being caught in the mass rioting in Lhasa in October 1987; he was detained, and his visa was canceled.  Upon leaving Tibet, Kerr went to India where he met the Dalai Lama and Tibetan groups to describe what he saw in Lhasa.  Kerr concludes with his return to China and Tibet, where he informally surveyed population control practices, ranging from abortions to mass sterilizations.  Kerr’s masterful prose makes it hard to put the book down, and what he describes certainly needs to reach a wide audience.

Donald Clay Johnson
University of Minnesota Library
Minneapolis

EASTERN EXPRESS
Reviewed by Nancy Nash

Hollywood Heroes in the Making

If someone does not make a “buddy movie” out of this book, Hollywood will have missed the boat when it comes to a true adventure in the Himalayas, complete with two good-looking Western guys, heroic Tibetan monks, and a conclusion sometime in the future that could lend itself to an upbeat sequel.

The buddies from the United States are recently graduated physician Blake Kerr, and his best travel pal from Dartmouth College days, recently graduated lawyer John Ackerly.

They went to Tibet in 1987 to top-up trekking challenges tested in Kashmir, the Andes and Yosemite. 

The banter between the two is tailor-made for a script, a good script for a top of the line production—because it is genuine and resonates with intelligence, humor and friendship.

When Kerr first proposes the Journey, Ackerly says: “I can’t leave my practice until I learn how to sue doctors.”

Kerr: “Then how about after I finish medical . . . that’s two years before I can malpractice on you . . . “

With a minimum of words, the author establishes the characters.

Cut to Lhasa.

Increasingly sensitized to the oppressive Chinese occupying forces, they realize Tibetan discontent has been brewing to boiling point.

Suddenly a series of demonstrations by monks erupts, triggering an explosion of pro-independence protests greater than anything witnessed by foreigners since China entered Tibet in 1949—but this is put down brutally by Chinese police and army forces. 

But not before physician Kerr has done his best to urgently minister to some of the Tibetan wounded, while advocate Ackerly has managed to mentally record and photograph events.

Both are arrested, endure imprisonment, and are expelled.

The End.

Kerr, a general practitioner on the US east coast, has since journeyed several times to refugee communities in India to document human rights violations.

Kerr writes with a universal voice that embraces first person literature at its all-encompassing best.

Irony and color, vivid insight, as well as entertainment with a special vision that enlightens: an act hard to pull off.

This volume is lean, emotional without being polemical.  It is all true, touching and fist-hand.

Are you listening Hollywood?

About the Author

Blake Kerr was born in Ithaca, New York in 1958. He graduated from Dartmouth College and Suny Buffalo School of Medicine. In 1987 he traveled to Tibet where he witnessed the violent repression of Tibetan nationalist demonstrations by Chinese police. Since then he has journeyed

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1466477571
• ISBN 13: 9781466477575
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 230