Loten Namling

Phayul: Last year, you began a coffin dragging march “Journey for Freedom- one man, one path, free Tibet”, Can you tell us something about it?

Loten Namling: My Campaign, actually my life has been a campaign. I was born in India as a refugee, grew up in India. So, from the age of five, my mother taught me Tibetan writing and reading and ever since as I grew up I learnt about the situation of Tibetan people through my mother. Now I live in Switzerland and I sing Tibetan traditional songs and now-a-days modern Tibetan songs over guitar. Last year, because of the really desperate situation in Tibet with so many self-immolation protests happening one after another, the media in the west were very afraid to tell the true situation in Tibet. There was a huge Chinese pressure and the media was in a way hesitant, firstly because there was no direct access to the situation in Tibet. Whatever the reason was, very less has been said even today about the self-immolations in Tibet. (Phayul , 2013, In Conversation with Loten Namling, Available here, 11/7/2024)

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(TibetSun): Why you he choose such a difficult mode of protest?

“First of all,” explained Namling, “My father made a pilgrimage of over 1000 kilometers on foot from his tiny village to Lhasa in order to become a monk. The hardship of the journey is always an important aspect of a pilgrimage. Secondly, I see the coffin as a symbol of the incredibly tough, and until today, still fruitless struggle for the
freedom of my people. A struggle that goes back to the end of the 1950s. I am not carrying a cross, but I am pulling a coffin!” (Tibet Sun, Loten Namling honoured with Free Spirit Award 2012, 2012, Available here, Access 11/7/2024)

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