By Simon Denyer
DHARMSALA, India — He walked three times around the rural monastery he had attended as a small child, cycled into town and had a simple vegetarian meal with a friend. Then 22-year-old Lobsang Jamyang excused himself to go to the bathroom.Inside, he doused himself with gasoline. When he emerged, he was already in flames.
Jamyang then ran a few yards to the intersection at the center of the eastern Tibetan town of Ngaba, faced its huge main Kirti monastery and shouted slogans calling for Tibetan independence from China and for the return of the Dalai Lama, the region’s exiled religious leader.
In the tense and heavily militarized town, police first kicked him and beat him with clubs spiked with nails before dousing the flames, according to witness reports compiled by refugee groups here in the Indian hill town of Dharmsala.
Jamyang was one of more than 33 Tibetans who have set themselves on fire in a recent wave of copycat acts of resistance against Chinese rule. The self-immolations are a reaction to what many Tibetans see as a systematic attempt to destroy their culture, silence their voices and erase their identity — a Chinese crackdown that has dramatically intensified since protests swept across the region in 2008.
Before he died, Jamyang had given the friend he lunched with three messages, said a close friend. One was that Tibetans in his village should work harder to preserve their language against the onslaught of Mandarin; the second was that a couple in his village who had recently divorced should reunite.
“The third message was that Tibetans should be very strong to face China, that Tibetans should not be cowards and should not remain silent,” said the friend, who fled his homeland for Dharmsala but remains in touch with local people. Today, Dharmsala is home to thousands of Tibetans, grouped around the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 as an uprising there was ruthlessly crushed.
In the spring of 2008, as the Beijing Olympics approached, Tibet was once again engulfed in protests and riots in which hundreds were killed and thousands were arrested. The response has been brutal, human rights groups say.
A program to resettle Tibet’s nomads into apartments or cinder-block houses and fence off their vast grasslands has gathered pace, the replacement of Tibetan by Chinese as a medium of instruction in schools has been expanded, and government control over Tibet’s Buddhist monasteries, the center of religious and cultural life, has been tightened.
Yet the crackdown seems to have fueled a renewed sense of Tibetan national identity, according to refugees who have fled the region recently for Dharmsala and those like teacher Kelsang Nyima, who returned to his Tibetan village in the Chinese province of Qinghai this year to visit relatives.
“When I left Tibet in 1998, there was not that much conversation about Tibetan nationalism, although some people talked of the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama,” he said. “This time I can strongly feel the growing sense of nationalism among Tibetans. It is a huge change.”
Once a week, all across this vast Himalayan plateau, Tibetans wear traditional dress, speak only in Tibetan and avoid shops run by Han Chinese, a protest known as “White Wednesday.”
Scores of writers, intellectuals and artists were arrested in 2008 for overtly political work, but in a powerful resurgence of Tibetan culture, others have doggedly continued. Their messages of freedom and yearning for the return of the Dalai Lama are concealed in subtle metaphors that escape the wrath of Chinese officials.
Others yearn for a more overt expression of their feelings, an expression that has been closed off by China.
The monks’ statement
In February 2009, a young monk called Tapey from the Kirti monastery, among the most influential in the east of the Tibetan region, set himself alight carrying a homemade Tibetan flag and a picture of the Dalai Lama. He was fatally shot by police.
The monastery, in the Chinese province of Sichuan, had been under growing official scrutiny since 1997, its monks subject to intense sessions of “patriotic reeducation” and those deemed insufficiently enthusiastic thrown out of the order, said Lobsang Yeshi, a monk who has since fled to India but has remained in contact with his old friends.
“The three main monasteries in [the Tibetan capital] Lhasa were the center of Tibetan Buddhism, but now they are more or less for tourists,” he said. “But Kirti monastery is one of the few large monasteries that is still struggling to some extent. The Chinese see it as a threat to their control, and they are trying to eliminate it.”
The monks were divided on how to respond. The older ones, who had lived through the Cultural Revolution, when the monasteries of Tibet were largely destroyed and emptied, “who knew what the Chinese were capable of,” argued for cooperation, said Yeshi, while the younger ones urged resistance.
The 2008 protests effectively ended the debate. Yeshi said that at least 30 people lost their lives in Ngaba, and many monks were detained for their role in the uprising. When a second self-immolation followed in March 2011, the Chinese response was dramatic.
The monastery was sealed off and 300 monks were arrested. Villagers surrounding the monastery in an attempt to protect its occupants were beaten and carried off by the truckload. The teachers and two friends of the monk who set himself afire were sentenced to a decade or more in jail for homicide.
But instead of stopping the immolations, it has only encouraged more, 20 from Ngaba alone, most of them monks or former monks, but also two nuns and two lay Tibetans.
Today, the town feels like a military camp, sealed off by soldiers, barricades and barbed wire on every block, said 26-year-old nomadic herdsman Sugney Kyab, who arrived in Dharmsala this month after a harrowing escape over the Himalayas.
“When we hear about the immolations we feel very helpless, all we can do is cry,” he said. “We have no voice, we can’t even make a phone call, it is so suffocating.”
Kyab and other refugees said the immolators had become heroes to Tibetans, their acts “a clear expression that we can no longer live under Chinese rule.”
It is also, say increasing numbers of young Tibetan refugees, a sign of the failure of the Dalai Lama’s “middle way,” a two-decade-long attempt to conciliate the Chinese and negotiate with them, an avoidance of any talk of independence in favor of a vaguely defined call for autonomy within China.
Exiles’ anguished appeals
China’s response to the self-immolations has been to blame the Dalai Lama, with one state-run Web site recently accusing him of wanting to impose “Nazi” racial policies inside Tibet and build a “ ‘Berlin Wall’ of ethnic segregation and confrontation.”
The middle way, it said, was strikingly “similar to the Holocaust committed by Hitler on the Jewish.”
The Dalai Lama has said that he does not condone the immolations, but he has largely removed himself from the debate since he retired from politics last year in favor of a democratically elected exiled administration headed by Lobsang Sangay, a former Harvard professor.
With Sangay reduced to seemingly impotent appeals to Tibetans not to take such “drastic” actions, the exile community in Dharmsala, which did so much to keep Tibet in the public eye during the dark years of China’s Cultural Revolution, has been reduced to the role of anguished spectator as Tibetans inside their homeland take up the mantle of resistance.
Jamyang, who came from a desperately poor nomadic family, became a monk at age 5, but at 10 he left to attend a Tibetan school. Just five years later, with his family facing financial problems, he was forced to leave.
His friend remembered him as someone who loved lying in the grass and playing as his family’s sheep and yak grazed.
“That was very funny to me when I reflect on his life,” the friend said.
But if Jamyang was passionate about Tibet’s rolling grasslands, over the years he also became passionate about politics, joining an association in his village trying to preserve the Tibetan language, a move that earned him trouble with the authorities.
In 2008, when the protests erupted, he warned his brothers that he was going to do something unique.
“His brothers took it as if he was just boasting,” the friend said. “But what I would like to mention is that he is very passionate about whatever he does.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/self-immolations-reflect-rising-tibetan-anger/2012/04/01/gIQA2szapS_print.html
Tibetan acts of self-immolation rise amid the battle for hearts and minds
Special report:
in Aba, a remote town on the Tibetan plateau, the Guardian witnesses
how Chinese authorities are trying to quell dissent through security,
propaganda and 're-education'
On the roof of the world, Chinese paramilitaries are trying to snuff
out Tibetan resistance to Beijing's rule with spiked batons,
semi-automatic weapons and fire extinguishers.
Every 20 metres along the main road of Aba, the remote town on the Tibetan plateau that is at the heart of the current wave of protests, police officers and communist officials wearing red armbands look out for potential protesters. Dozens more paramilitaries sit in ranks outside shops and restaurants in an intimidating show of force.
At the nearby Kirti monastery, Chinese officers in fire trucks keep a close eye on pilgrims prostrating themselves, in case their devotion turns to immolation.
Outsiders are not supposed to see this. The Chinese authorities have gone to great lengths to block access to Aba, in north-western Sichuan, which is home to more than half the 23 monks, nuns and lay Buddhists who have set fire to themselves in acts of defiance aimed at the Chinese Communist party in the past two years.
The authorities have blocked internet and mobile phone signals. Checkpoints have been set up on surrounding roads to keep outside observers, particularly foreign journalists, away.
But after a 10-hour drive through mountain valleys and snow-covered plains, the Guardian was able to get into Aba and witness how the authorities are trying to quell dissent with security, propaganda and "re-education" campaigns. These tactics have had little success. Despite flooding Aba with security personnel, the protests continue.
The latest occurred on Saturday. Tenzin Choedron, an 18-year-old nun, shouted anti-Chinese protests as she ignited her petrol-soaked body in Aba, exile groups said. Her whereabouts and condition are now unknown.
Three days earlier, a former Kirti monk sacrificed himself in similarly horrific fashion. Rinzin Dorje, was taken to a hospital but his whereabouts and wellbeing are also unclear.
Such acts of suicide and self-mutilation are escalating and widening. According to exile groups, there have been 23 self-immolations in the past two years, including six in the past eight days. The Chinese government disputes the number but acknowledges more than a dozen cases, and has warned of further unrest.
The tension is rippling outwards. Last week, in the provincial capital Chengdu, armed riot police with fire extinguishers to hand watched the crowds in the main Chunxi shopping district. Out of their sight, a Tibetan monk from Qinghai said the situation had worsened. "Now is difficult for Tibetans. The controls are very strict. There are many more police."
In the city's Tibetan quarter, police patrol cars were parked every few dozen metres. Many locals felt intimidated. "It's difficult to talk. It's very sensitive. They say people have died," said one shopkeeper from Aba. Others in the area were desperate for information from locked-down areas on the Tibetan plateau.
"My mother, father and husband are still there. It's a worry. I haven't been able to call for more than a week," said a restaurant owner from Seda, where protests and self-immolations have also been reported. "The government says only one person was killed, but we heard dozens were taken away and we don't know what has happened to them."
With more demonstrations expected before the Tibetan new year next week, Chen Quanguo, the communist party chief of Tibet, told security personnel to ready themselves for "a war against secessionist sabotage," according to a recent article in the Tibet Daily.
The countermeasures appear to include the use of lethal force. Security forces shot and killed a Tibetan monk and his brother on Thursday, according to Free Tibet. Yeshe Rigsal and Yeshe Samdrub had reportedly been on the run for more than two weeks after participating in a protest in Draggo, in Ganzi (known in Tibetan as Kardze), calling for the return of the Dalai Lama.
Protests have broken out in several areas, but the most intense have been in Aba, known in Tibetan as Ngaba – a mountainous area of north-west Sichuan that has been resisting Chinese Communist party rule for decades. In the 1930s, Mao Zedong encountered opposition here during his Long March. In 2008, it was the scene of some of the bloodiest clashes with security personnel. And 13 of the current 23 self-immolations have occurred here.
Today, Aba has road blocks, spot checks and a security presence reminiscent of conflict zones in the Middle East or Northern Ireland.
But the violence here is, for the most part, self-inflicted. And the battle is not for territory, but for hearts and minds and beliefs.
Locals are under pressure to show loyalty to the authorities. Chinese flags fly on every building. Posters emphasise the need for stability and harmony to achieve economic development.
The Tibetan community is divided.
"We are all Buddhists, but I don't agree with the self-immolations. That is the act of extremists," said one monk on the road near Aba. "We need peace."
But others are frustrated as restrictions have tightened and the prospects of a negotiated settlement diminish.
There has been no dialogue between the Chinese government and emissaries of the Dalai Lama since 2010. Meanwhile, the authorities have stepped up security and controls on monasteries.
A major source of discontent has been the lengthy "re-education campaigns" imposed on monks, who are forced to publicly renounce the Dalai Lama as a reactionary traitor and profess their patriotism and loyalty to China.
"They call it re-education, but in reality it means threats and intimidation. Monks would rather die than accept this," said Kanyag Tsering, a monk who has been in exile for 13 years. "I am very concerned that if current policies continue unchanged, there will be a rise in self-immolation protest and even more terrifying forms of protest."
Aba has long had one of the densest concentrations of monks and monasteries on the Tibetan plateau. Because of its importance, it's been subject to a stranglehold, said Kate Saunders of the International Campaign for Tibet. "In Tibet, the monasteries serve the function of universities. What is happening now is like a military blockade of Oxford and Cambridge. It's as if the UK tried to prevent students from studying anything except what the government wanted them to study. There is no breathing space."
China says its measures are necessary because the unrest has been plotted by the Dalai Lama and his followers. "Because of the violent incidents of mobbing and smashing, the Chinese government has taken appropriate measures to meet the desire of Tibetan communities for stability," said foreign ministry spokesperson Liu Weimin. "The incidents in some areas do not affect the harmony and stability of ethnic groups in China."
The prospects for calm appear remote. A professor at the Minorities University – who asked to remain anonymous – said the security presence was greater this year than it was during the deadly uprisings of 2008. "There are serious problems in the relationship between Han and Tibetans. It has got worse these past four years," the professor said.
Every 20 metres along the main road of Aba, the remote town on the Tibetan plateau that is at the heart of the current wave of protests, police officers and communist officials wearing red armbands look out for potential protesters. Dozens more paramilitaries sit in ranks outside shops and restaurants in an intimidating show of force.
At the nearby Kirti monastery, Chinese officers in fire trucks keep a close eye on pilgrims prostrating themselves, in case their devotion turns to immolation.
Outsiders are not supposed to see this. The Chinese authorities have gone to great lengths to block access to Aba, in north-western Sichuan, which is home to more than half the 23 monks, nuns and lay Buddhists who have set fire to themselves in acts of defiance aimed at the Chinese Communist party in the past two years.
The authorities have blocked internet and mobile phone signals. Checkpoints have been set up on surrounding roads to keep outside observers, particularly foreign journalists, away.
But after a 10-hour drive through mountain valleys and snow-covered plains, the Guardian was able to get into Aba and witness how the authorities are trying to quell dissent with security, propaganda and "re-education" campaigns. These tactics have had little success. Despite flooding Aba with security personnel, the protests continue.
The latest occurred on Saturday. Tenzin Choedron, an 18-year-old nun, shouted anti-Chinese protests as she ignited her petrol-soaked body in Aba, exile groups said. Her whereabouts and condition are now unknown.
Three days earlier, a former Kirti monk sacrificed himself in similarly horrific fashion. Rinzin Dorje, was taken to a hospital but his whereabouts and wellbeing are also unclear.
Such acts of suicide and self-mutilation are escalating and widening. According to exile groups, there have been 23 self-immolations in the past two years, including six in the past eight days. The Chinese government disputes the number but acknowledges more than a dozen cases, and has warned of further unrest.
The tension is rippling outwards. Last week, in the provincial capital Chengdu, armed riot police with fire extinguishers to hand watched the crowds in the main Chunxi shopping district. Out of their sight, a Tibetan monk from Qinghai said the situation had worsened. "Now is difficult for Tibetans. The controls are very strict. There are many more police."
In the city's Tibetan quarter, police patrol cars were parked every few dozen metres. Many locals felt intimidated. "It's difficult to talk. It's very sensitive. They say people have died," said one shopkeeper from Aba. Others in the area were desperate for information from locked-down areas on the Tibetan plateau.
"My mother, father and husband are still there. It's a worry. I haven't been able to call for more than a week," said a restaurant owner from Seda, where protests and self-immolations have also been reported. "The government says only one person was killed, but we heard dozens were taken away and we don't know what has happened to them."
With more demonstrations expected before the Tibetan new year next week, Chen Quanguo, the communist party chief of Tibet, told security personnel to ready themselves for "a war against secessionist sabotage," according to a recent article in the Tibet Daily.
The countermeasures appear to include the use of lethal force. Security forces shot and killed a Tibetan monk and his brother on Thursday, according to Free Tibet. Yeshe Rigsal and Yeshe Samdrub had reportedly been on the run for more than two weeks after participating in a protest in Draggo, in Ganzi (known in Tibetan as Kardze), calling for the return of the Dalai Lama.
Protests have broken out in several areas, but the most intense have been in Aba, known in Tibetan as Ngaba – a mountainous area of north-west Sichuan that has been resisting Chinese Communist party rule for decades. In the 1930s, Mao Zedong encountered opposition here during his Long March. In 2008, it was the scene of some of the bloodiest clashes with security personnel. And 13 of the current 23 self-immolations have occurred here.
Today, Aba has road blocks, spot checks and a security presence reminiscent of conflict zones in the Middle East or Northern Ireland.
But the violence here is, for the most part, self-inflicted. And the battle is not for territory, but for hearts and minds and beliefs.
Locals are under pressure to show loyalty to the authorities. Chinese flags fly on every building. Posters emphasise the need for stability and harmony to achieve economic development.
The Tibetan community is divided.
"We are all Buddhists, but I don't agree with the self-immolations. That is the act of extremists," said one monk on the road near Aba. "We need peace."
But others are frustrated as restrictions have tightened and the prospects of a negotiated settlement diminish.
There has been no dialogue between the Chinese government and emissaries of the Dalai Lama since 2010. Meanwhile, the authorities have stepped up security and controls on monasteries.
A major source of discontent has been the lengthy "re-education campaigns" imposed on monks, who are forced to publicly renounce the Dalai Lama as a reactionary traitor and profess their patriotism and loyalty to China.
"They call it re-education, but in reality it means threats and intimidation. Monks would rather die than accept this," said Kanyag Tsering, a monk who has been in exile for 13 years. "I am very concerned that if current policies continue unchanged, there will be a rise in self-immolation protest and even more terrifying forms of protest."
Aba has long had one of the densest concentrations of monks and monasteries on the Tibetan plateau. Because of its importance, it's been subject to a stranglehold, said Kate Saunders of the International Campaign for Tibet. "In Tibet, the monasteries serve the function of universities. What is happening now is like a military blockade of Oxford and Cambridge. It's as if the UK tried to prevent students from studying anything except what the government wanted them to study. There is no breathing space."
China says its measures are necessary because the unrest has been plotted by the Dalai Lama and his followers. "Because of the violent incidents of mobbing and smashing, the Chinese government has taken appropriate measures to meet the desire of Tibetan communities for stability," said foreign ministry spokesperson Liu Weimin. "The incidents in some areas do not affect the harmony and stability of ethnic groups in China."
The prospects for calm appear remote. A professor at the Minorities University – who asked to remain anonymous – said the security presence was greater this year than it was during the deadly uprisings of 2008. "There are serious problems in the relationship between Han and Tibetans. It has got worse these past four years," the professor said.
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He gave voice to Tibet's anguish. Now he needs our voices.
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My name is Lhamo Tso and I'm writing today to ask for your help securing the release of my husband, Dhondup Wangchen. In 2008 Dhondup made a film called "Leaving Fear Behind," capturing the voices of fellow Tibetans on the eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. China was awarded the prestigious Games with the hope that human rights in Tibet and elsewhere in China would improve. Instead, China's repression in Tibet has only worsened. Attempts by Tibetans to secure their human rights are routinely crushed. Dhondup has been punished severely. He was tortured and held without charge for nearly a year, then sentenced in a secret trial to six years imprisonment for "inciting separatism." My husband has committed no crime. Dhondup suffers from Hepatitis B and was denied medical treatment. My sister in-law takes food and clothes to the prison every month, but it is extremely difficult to obtain reliable information about Dhondup's condition. Call on the Chinese authorities to give Dhondup the medical attention he urgently needs and to immediately release him and all prisoners of conscience. Dhondup and I come from northeast Tibet -- the epicenter of recent protests against the Chinese authorities. In my husband's documentary, people express their frustration with the situation, which seems to grow worse each year. Nomads are evicted from their pastures, school children were recently expelled for demanding Tibetan textbooks, natural resources are exploited with no respect for nature, monasteries are under constant surveillance, and Tibetans fear that they might never see the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet. My people have responded with dramatic acts of self-sacrifice -- including setting themselves on fire -- as a last attempt to demand the same freedom and rights that every human being should enjoy. I saw horrific photos and videos of these self-immolations and wonder why something like this has to happen in our world. Never give up hope. My husband tried to show the world both beauty and struggle inside Tibet. Despite our hardships, my family believes in humanity -- we will never give up the hope that there is a better tomorrow. Please join me in showing Dhondup that you see him, you hear him, and that you will speak for him and all prisoners of conscience when their voices are silenced. Please act today. Click here to join Amnesty International's global campaign demanding the release of Dhondup and all prisoners of conscience. I am incredibly grateful for your kind acts.  Sincerely, Lhamo Tso PS - At the moment, I am travelling through North America to speak about Dhondup. My tour is organized by different groups, including Amnesty International USA. I feel encouraged to meet people who show sincere concern about the situation of my husband and the many other political prisoners in Tibet. Please check my itinerary -- it would be a pleasure for me to meet you! | ||||
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