Sharon Stone
Did karma cause China's earthquake?

May 30 | archive | subscribe

Actress Sharon Stone, 50, linked China's treatment of Tibet to the earthquake that killed thousands earlier in May. "All this earthquake and all this stuff happened," she said during the Cannes Film Festival last week, "and I thought, is that karma—when you’re not nice that the bad things happen to you?" Her statement elicited angry replies from China, where several cinemas vowed never to screen her films.

Stone's "karma" comment is having an instant effect on her movie-star status in China. That prompted the founder of one of China's biggest cinema chains to say his company would not show her films in his theaters, according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter.

Sharon Stone is just contributing to a "series of idiotic celebrity pronouncements on current events," said the Guardian'sfilm blog. It's not like the Chinese people democratically elected their government and unilaterally as a people decided to "ride roughshod over Tibetan independence."

More importantly, mere mortals "might not be competent to judge the moral vector of acts of God," said Paul O'Donnell on Beliefnet's Idol Chatter blog. Even if China didn't have a "totalitarian government," you just can't link a calamity that left "millions of Chinese without homes and grieving their loved ones" to the policies of Beijing. "It makes her sound like a preacher blaming 9/11 on the ACLU, homosexuals, and abortionists."

But "listen to what she actually says," said American Buddhist Net. First, she doesn't say it's karma, but she asks it as a question. Then, she explains how the Tibetan foundation wanted to aid victims of the earthquake, and how the tragedy taught her “that sometimes you have to learn to put your head down and be of service even to people who aren’t nice to you.” People who reacted angrily to her statements "should listen to the whole tape and reconsider."

The organization Stone is referring to as the Tibetan foundation is the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), and can be found at SaveTibet.org. The organization fundamentally believes that there must be a political solution based on direct dialogue between the Dalai Lama and his representatives and the People's Republic of China.

 “It is our message to Tibetans in Tibet to encourage even more dialogue about how foreign governments, NGOs, news outlets and others can better improve conditions in Tibet. In short, we are keeping our focus inside Tibet and working to build trust, relationships and concrete improvements at the same time we work to invigorate international diplomatic efforts for Tibet.” Said John Ackerly, President ICT. savetibet.org