Tibetan burnings reach new
level By Parameswaran
Ponnudurai
The wave of Tibetan
self-immolation protests against Chinese rule may
have entered a new phase following a record number
of burnings last week.
The failure to
contain the fiery protests, experts say, poses a
major challenge to Beijing, which has tried a
combination of strategies to douse the Tibetan
campaign - from offering cash rewards to Tibetans
to tip off potential burnings to tightening
security clampdowns on monasteries.
There
were seven self-immolations from October 20 to
Saturday, making it the deadliest week of burnings
since the fiery protests intensified in March last
year against Beijing's rule in the Tibet
Autonomous Region and
Tibetan-populated areas in Chinese provinces.
Two burnings per day were reported twice
in the previous week - another record - as the
number of self-immolations which began in February
2009 rose to 62.
The protests are
continuing despite calls to end them by a special
meeting of Tibetan exile groups convened on the
advice of Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama
in India's hill town of Dharamsala, where he lives
in exile.
"This is a very serious
development, suggesting that Tibetans believe that
this rising number of self-immolations will make a
substantive difference to their political
situation, and it could lead to more people
burning themselves," Robert Barnett, a scholar of
Tibet at Columbia University, told RFA.
He
thinks the self-immolation protests that have been
questioning Beijing's rule and calling for the
return of the Dalai Lama have entered a new phase.
The first phase, he said, was sparked in
March last year when monks at the restive Kirti
monastery in the Ngaba Tibetan Autonomous
Prefecture of western China's Sichuan province
torched themselves to display their anger at the
security clampdown at the monastery.
The
protests spread to neighboring Qinghai and Gansu
provinces and to the Tibetan Autonomous Region as
Tibetan lay people joined monks and nuns in
setting themselves alight and holding street
demonstrations to underline their opposition to
Chinese rule.
"The second phase involved
lay people, who were not responding to any
particular incident but possibly to demonstrate
sympathy for the monks and nuns. There was a
general realization that the monks were under
pressure," Barnett said.
The latest string
of self-immolation protests - which involved
double burnings on a single day, a cluster of five
burnings in a week in the Kanlho (Gannan) Tibetan
Autonomous Prefecture and calls by self-immolators
for independence for Tibet - signal a new phase,
he explained.
"This seems to me a new
development."
Intensifying The
self-immolation protests are intensifying even as
Chinese authorities take various measures to
contain the situation.
On October 21,
Chinese police put up notices in Kanlho prefecture
offering those who tip off authorities of planned
self-immolations a reward of nearly US $8,000.
Since the notice was issued, four immolations
occurred in the area.
"The language used
in the notice is consistent with the absence of
official acknowledgement of policies or practices
that have assuredly contributed to the ...
self-immolations in Tibet since February 2009,"
said Washington-based advocacy group International
Campaign for Tibet president Mary Beth Markey.
"Instead officials continue to characterize the
Tibetan self-immolations as imitative, criminal,
or misguided acts of 'terrorism-in-disguise'."
Chinese officials had also approached the
family of a Tibetan who self-immolated recently
and offered them one million yuan (US$160,000) "if
they confess and sign a document stating that he
died over a family dispute and not in protest
against Chinese rule."
Dorjee Kyi, the
wife of Sangay Gyatso, a 27-year-old father of two
who self-immolated on October 6 in a monastery
compound in Tsoe (in Chinese, Hezuo) county in
Gansu, rejected the offer, according to sources
close to the family.
Detained Hundreds of Tibetans
suspected by the authorities of being linked to
the self-immolations have also been detained,
often in locations unknown to their families and
without any legal rights, rights groups said.
In an apparent attempt to instil fear into
the Tibetans, stiff jail sentences - of up to 11
years - are being imposed on those spreading news
of self-immolations to "outside contacts."
Communication links to areas where
self-immolations occur are also cut off
immediately to avoid any negative publicity,
sources said.
"Across Tibet, the Chinese
state is employing force and intimidation to quell
calls for freedom and suppress information about
protests," London-based advocacy group Free Tibet
Director Stephanie Brigden said.
"The
people of Tibet continue to reject Chinese rule
despite the state's use of lethal force against
protesters, disappearances, mass detentions,
torture, deaths in detention, surveillance of
communities and measures aimed at turning Tibetans
against each other."
Brigden said Tibetans
were also choosing the locations of their
self-immolation protests carefully, pointing
towards a potential trend of setting themselves on
fire in front of Chinese government buildings that
symbolize Beijing's occupation.
Lobsang
Sangay, head of the Central Tibetan Administration
(CTA), as the government in exile is called, said
the self-immolations stemmed from "political
repression, economic marginalization,
environmental destruction and cultural
assimilation in Tibet by the Chinese government".
"Stop the repression and self-immolation
would stop," he said. "In Tibet today, there are
more Chinese than Tibetans, more troops than
Tibetan monks and more surveillance cameras than
windows, more guns than Tibetan butter lamps."
(Copyright 1998-2012 Radio Free Asia. All
rights reserved. Republished with permission.)
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