Sky Burial

May 31, 1993
In 1987, Kerr, a young physician, and his friend John Ackerly, a lawyer, went to Tibet on an unabashedly larky jaunt in search of adventure. After impetuously hiking 22,000 feet on Chomohunga in sneakers, they were in Lhasa when a small group of Buddhist monks appeared chanting ``China out of Tibet.'' Huge crowds gathered; the monks were arrested by Chinese police, some were rumored to have been beaten or shot and there was bloodshed in the now rioting crowd. Kerr and Ackerly were so deeply affected by the violence and by other evidence of Chinese repression of the Tibetans that they became activists in the cause of Tibetan independence. A year later, Kerr returned to document population control measures imposed by the Chinese on the Tibetans. He visited hospitals, observed several abortions and talked--sometimes in sign language, occasionally with the help of an interpreter--with doctors and patients, who described China's two-child limit, one-child-preferred population policies and the grossly unsanitary conditions of medical procedures. The small number of Tibetan voices, eccentric circumstances and emotional reporting detract from the impact of this part antic travelogue, part serious polemic.