1. The Self-Immolation of Tibetan Monks

1.僧众的牺牲

It usually takes a U.S. President tweaking Beijing by meeting with the Dalai Lama, or a celebrity-studded Richard Gere fundraiser, to get Tibet into the news these days. Even then, the attention is fleeting. Not so the despair of many Tibetans at their plight under Chinese rule, now in its seventh decade. TIME's Hannah Beech sneaked into Twu in eastern Tibet earlier this year to report one of the most gripping stories out of the region in years: At least eight Tibetan monks, two of them teenagers, have torched themselves this year to protest Chinese rule. Self-immolation is an old and horrifying form of protest that Americans first saw on television during the Vietnam War, and which touched off Tunisia's democratic uprising and the wider 'Arab Spring' earlier this year. Its emergence among Buddhist monks in Tibet illustrates what Beech called a "new, nihilistic desperation [that] has descended on the Tibetan plateau." Despite the efforts of the Chinese authorities to quickly dispose of the bodies in the hope of heading off further protest, Beech wrote, "Monks on fire grab headlines." Hopefully, more attention will be paid.

现在通常是当美国总统执意会见一位诺贝尔和平奖获得者挑动了某国领导层神经，或像李察·基尔这样有名人效应的基金发起人牵涉在内时，敏感词问题才会重新出现在资讯中。即便如此公众的注意力还是转瞬即逝。然而生活在敏感词地区的人们因遭遇长达七十年的困苦而产生的绝望情绪却不会消失。《时代周刊》的Hannah Beech于今年年初潜伏进这一敏感词地区东部某地，报道了这一地区多年来众多令人揪心的事情中的一件：至少八名该地区的僧众，其中两名是十几岁的青少年，为抗议当局统治自焚。美国人在越战期间第一次从电视中见识到了这种古老而恐怖的为表达抗议而自我牺牲的方式，这样的事件也引发了突尼斯的民主起义及今年年初波及范围更广的“阿拉伯之春。而发生在僧众之中的此次事件表明了Beech所称“一种新的、虚无主义的绝望正发生在这一地区。尽管当局迅速处理了遗体，希望阻止未来进一步的抗议，但Beech写道：“这一事件还是成了头条。我们希望更多人能关注此事。

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