Richard Gere Slams China: It's The World's Biggest Hypocrisy
The actor and Dalai Lama devotee – currently in India attending a Buddhist event – also said in a TV interview, “China will have to kill all Tibetans to destroy their culture and they are not going to do that.”
11:51 PM PST 1/10/2012 by Nyay Bhushan
NEW DELHI – In a prime-time interview telecast Tuesday night on leading English news channel NDTV 24x7, when asked about his views on the recent cases of self-immolation by some monks in Tibet protesting against China, Richard Gere said, “China is a very difficult place to live if you are a free thinker, if you are an artist, if you are a religious person, but especially in Tibet. I think they (China) have so wrongly gauged the Tibetan people, thinking they could subvert the deep, deep, deep religious beliefs and make them true Communists. It's never going to happen. Their whole lives have revolved around Buddhism, around their teachers, around their gurus... the high ideals of Buddhism. They are not going to change that in a hundred years, two hundred years, a thousand years, that will never go away."
Gere has been in India since new year's day attending the 10-day Buddhist religious event - the Kalachakra Puja - at the holy Bodh Gaya site where the Buddha gained enlightenment, in the eastern state of Bihar. The annual event, being held for world peace, was opened by Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama who has been living in India since 1959 following his exile from Tibet after the Chinese occupation.
A long-time Buddhist and Dalai Lama devotee, Gere has been a regular visitor to India where the exiled Tibetan leader and a large Tibetan community reside in the northern town of Dharamsala. Gere has also lent his high profile celebrity status to support and advocate the cause of Tibet.
While the protest movement against China's occupation of Tibet has mostly been non-violent, there have been a spate of recent incidents in Tibet with monks immolating themselves, some even holding the Dalai Lama's photograph in their hands. “It all really comes down to motivation. I mean none of these self-immolators have harmed anybody else. It is totally a self-sacrifice for their people, for others. So on that level it's a pure act,” said Gere adding, “But I think it's more important to look into the causes of why people would feel they would need to do these kind of things?”
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/richard-gere-china-largest-hypocrisy-world-280408
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