Tibetan herder’s death marks wider spread of protest
Two Tibetans set themselves on fire in the
north-western Chinese province of Qinghai on Wednesday according to
state media reports, with the death of a herder in a remote county
suggesting that the self-immolation protests in Tibetan areas — at least
40 over the past year — are spreading beyond monastery towns.
A
video released by overseas groups showed two young Tibetans engulfed in
flames before collapsing in what appeared to be a parking lot in front
of a store selling construction material. Shocked passersby looked on as
the men waved small flags — symbols of the Tibetan independence
movement which are banned in China.
The official
Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday that Tenzin Khedup, a
24-year-old herder, died after the protest in the township of Kardo in
Yushu, a Tibetan prefecture in Qinghai. The protest took place at 3.30
p.m. on Wednesday afternoon.
Authorities were still
trying to identify the second protester, reported to be a carpenter from
a Tibetan area of neighbouring Sichuan province. Xinhua reported that
he was unconscious. Overseas groups named him as Ngawang Norphel (22),
adding that he was taken to a hospital with serious burns.
Exiled
groups said the two had left a note saying they “decided to
self-immolate with the hope that His Holiness the Dalai Lama may live
long and return to Tibet as soon as possible”. “For the cause of
Tibetans, we chose to die for these reasons,” the note said, according
to the groups.
Wednesday’s protests marked the 39th
and 40th self-immolations reported in the past year, of which at least
30 people have died. Seven self-immolations have been reported from
Qinghai, with five deaths.
Twenty-five of the
protests took place in Tibetan areas of Sichuan province, mainly in the
Aba Tibetan prefecture from where one of Wednesday’s protesters came.
Most of the self-immolations were carried out by Tibetan monks; six nuns
were also among the protesters.
Many of the protests
in Sichuan took place at the influential Kirti monastery in Aba. While
Chinese officials have blamed exiled Kirti monks in India for stirring
the unrest, monks in other monasteries say tightening security
restrictions in Aba are triggering the protests.
Aba
is one of several Tibetan areas where authorities have boosted security
deployments and barred visits from tourists and journalists over the
past year. According to Aba residents now living in Beijing, recent
months have seen an unprecedented security clampdown, with the setting
up of dozens of checkpoints manned by police and paramilitary forces, a
shutdown of the Internet and restrictions on mobile phone communication.
As
of 2009, public security spending in Aba was six times the average
expenditure in non-Tibetan prefectures in Sichuan. Local officials view
the protests as separatist acts and “terrorism” and have vowed to clamp
down on any unrest and step up security.
The
Communist Party chief of the Aba Tibetan prefecture, Wu Zegang, earlier
this year accused the Dalai Lama of “supporting and inspiring” the
self-immolations. “By touting self-immolaters as heroes and performing
religious rituals to expiate the sins of the dead, they support and
inspire self-immolations,” he said. “They instigate people to emulate
this behaviour and are not hesitant to use terrorism to reach their
objectives.”
The Dalai Lama has denied encouraging
the protests. He has blamed Chinese policies for triggering the
incidents, and expressed sympathy with the monks. He has, however,
stopped short of calling for the protests to end; he declined to respond
to a question last month when asked if he thought the incidents should
stop.
In recent months, the protests, initially
restricted to the monks and nuns of monastery towns, have spread to
other Tibetan areas and involved ordinary Tibetans, as in Wednesday’s
protest by a herder. A farmer set himself on fire in the town of
Tongren, also in Qinghai, earlier this year, while a young Tibetan
student, Tsering Kyi, died in Gansu province in March.
The
spreading protests have garnered wide sympathy among many Tibetans in
China, but also raised concerns among both monks and ordinary Tibetans
that the acts would bring increased restrictions of the kind that were
imposed following riots in 2008, such as added security in monasteries
and travel bans, that were subsequently withdrawn.
Others
have argued that the immolations might also be counterproductive to
taking forward Tibetan concerns. Tibetan poets Woeser and Gade Tsering,
both of whom live in China, in an appeal called on monks and Tibetan
intellectuals to help stop the immolations.
“Tibetans
must cherish life and live with resilience. Regardless of the magnitude
of oppression, our life is important, and we have to cherish it,” the
appeal said. “Staying alive allows us to gather the strength as drops of
water to form a great ocean.”
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