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Tibet: 99 self-immolations and counting
Last updated on:
January 30, 2013 10:05 IST
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Image: In this handout photo released by The International Campaign for Tibet
on, a man is seen ablaze after he set himself on fire in Xiahe, Gannan Tibetan
Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu province
Photographs: ICT/Reuters
Photographs: ICT/Reuters
In Tibet, the
people's frustration with their colonial masters has reached the extreme,
international silence is too defening, says Tibetologist Vijay Kranti
On January 19, Jigjey Kya a 17-year old
Tibetan school boy of Shigtsang Pungkor town of Luchu in Eastern Tibet (now in
Gansu province of China), was seen running in the street and shouting slogans
demanding Tibet's freedom from China and Dalai Lama's return to Tibet.
His clothes were doused in kerosene and he was
holding a lighter in his hand. Had he been able to light the fire, he would
have been the 98th in the ongoing spate of self-immolations across 'China's
Tibet' since February 2009.
But before he could do so, he collapsed and soon
died. His hand written suicide note later indicated that he had consumed a strong
dose of some poison to ensure that he did not land alive into the hands of the
Chinese police if he survived the flames.
Jigjey's fears about China's Public Security
Bureau, an equivalent of Hitler's Gestapo in the Nazi era of Germany, were not
misplaced. Well-recorded accounts of Tibetan immolations, as compiled by
various Tibetan and independent international rights groups, present many cases
when instead of saving the burning Tibetan self immolator, the PSB agents
kicked the victim with their boots and hit him with batons.
In most of over 15 cases in which the immolator
survived, their whereabouts are not known and the family members have had to go
through serious problems with the police and the administration.
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Monks must submit essays condemning Dalai Lama
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Image: Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama
In Ngaba, known for famous Kirti
monastery and a major centre of anti-China protests and self immolations in
recent years, two monks Tashi, 21, and Lungtok, 20, committed self-immolation
together on 13th August 2012.
While Lungtok died on the scene before the PSB
agents arrived, they collectively kicked and hit Tashi before taking him away.
Soon after Tashi was declared dead. The PSB did not announce whether he died of
burns or police beating.
On 7th Oct 2011, two other monks -- Choephel, 19,
and Khayang, 18 -- set themselves on fire in Ngaba main town. Khanyang had quit
the Kirti monastery and Choephel was expelled following self immolation by
another monk Phuntsog, 21, earlier in March.
Kirti was the scene of heavy anti-China public
protests in March 2008 when Chinese police shot dead 13 Tibetan demonstrators.
In another case a nun in flames screaming pro-Tibet slogans was practically
stoned to death by a crowd of newly settled Han Chinese.
Monks and nuns occupy over a fourth part of the
list of self-immolators across Tibet for the reasons that strong police control
and communist indoctrination in monasteries have left the monastic community in
a state of utter frustration.
As a part of compulsory 'patriotic re-education'
the monks must study communism and submit essays condemning Dalai Lama by name
and also those who believe in Tibet's historic identity as different from China
as a nation.
Over past two decades, Beijing's dual policy of
promoting visual aspects of Tibetan Buddhism, like monasteries, temples, fine
arts and handicrafts to attract international tourism, and occupying Tibet's
religious hierarchy from within by stronger regimentation of the monasteries
has only further enraged the monastic community.
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The Dalai Lama's rebirth has to be certified by
China
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Image: A Tibetan woman offers prayer upon her arrival during an event organised
to express solidarity with the victims of violence in Tibet Photographs: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters
Since the third meeting of Work Forum on
Tibet in 1994, a policy designing group of China's Communist Party to maintain
control over Tibet, Chinese leadership had first time in 43 years of Tibetan
occupation recognised the importance of religion over the Tibetan society and
evolved this new strategy.
As a part of this strategy, Beijing established an
official committee of Tibetan monks and communist administrators in Tibet to
search for the reincarnation of former Karma Pa in 1994 and later for Panchen
Lama in 1995.
However, Karma Pa, identified by the committee,
later escaped to India to join the Dalai Lama. But the five-year-old Gedhun
Choeky Nyima, was recognised as the new Panchen Lama incarnate by the Dalai
Lama from exile before Beijing could take a decision.
As a result he was taken into custody by China in
1995 and is since missing. Beijing installed another boy Gianchin (Gyaltsen)
Norbu as the 'real' Panchen Lama.
On August 3, 2007, Beijing went a step further in
the direction of controlling religion when the state religious affairs bureau
issued 'Order No. 5' which transferred the final authority of recognition of
any 'Tulku' (reincarnated high ranking monks) from the Tibetan monastic
community into the hands of the Communist Party and the administrators
controlled by it.
By implication, the next Dalai Lama will be
considered as 'legitimate and real Dalai Lama' only if his rebirth is certified
by the concerned Communist leaders of China. That explains the growing
frustration among the monastic community of Tibet today.
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Han migrants dominate Lhasa landscape
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Image: A man takes a photograph in front of a
screen displaying propaganda about China's Tibet Autonomous Region on Beijing's
Tiananmen Square Photographs: David Gray/Reuters
China's policy of finding the 'last
solution' to Tibetan problem by changing the demographic character of Tibet has
emerged as the biggest source of social frustration and helplessness among the
Tibetan masses.
Living under Chinese occupation in Tibet Autonomous
Region as well as the other two provinces of Kham and Amdo which were
dismembered from Tibet and their parts were integrated into adjoining Chinese
provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai.
Over the past two decades, millions of Han Chinese
have been brought and settled all across Tibet as a part of Beijing's project,
popularly known as the 'Western Development Plan'.
This has rendered local Tibetans into an almost
meaningless minority in their own towns and the country as a whole.
In Lhasa, traditionally a city of hardly 20,000
residents in normal days and a hundred thousand during the month of annual
prayer festival 'Monlam', the number of car registrations crossed the figure of
approximately one lakh in 2008. Today much over a million (exact figures not
known) Hans dominate Lhasa landscape.
With most of good land being taken over for
farming, new towns, expansion of cities and mining projects; establishment of
new projects and business aimed at the skills and needs of migrant Hans;
overwhelming of Tibetan language by Chinese Mandarin and resulting disadvantage
to the Tibetan youths #8743 diminishing physical scope for expression of their
socio-political concerns amid a flood of Han migrants has taken the levels of
Tibetan frustration to newer heights.
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Nomads have been ordered to quit migratory living
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Image: Tibetan nomads wait for tourists to ride their horses at Namtso Lake in
Tibet Autonomous Region Photographs: Claro Cortes/Reuters
On August 13, 2012 Passang Lhamo, a 62
year old Tibetan woman set herself on fire in Beijing in front of a government
office. In hope of justice, she had travelled all the way from her house in
Eastern Tibet where local authorities had taken over her family's land for
reorganisation following the earthquake but had refused to compensate them for
the grabbed land.
Similarly, on June 27, 2012, Dekyi Choezom, a
40-year-old Tibetan woman set herself on fire during a public protest in
Jaykundo, also in Eastern Tibet. A group of 70 Tibetan families were demanding
their right over their own lands which were taken away in the name of
reconstruction plan after the 2010 quake.
Recently, during one of my travels inside Tibet, I
was shocked to see long stretches of hills along Chengdu-Lithang route in
Eastern Tibet with most of trees taken away and hundreds of tree trunks lying
on slops for drying or transportation.
Various international estimates of Timber taken
away from Tibet to China put the figures at US $ 50 billion. And a good part is
supposed to have gone to individual pockets of Chinese communist leaders over
the years.
Recent Chinese enthusiasm to 'protect' environment
in these regions have spelt a new disaster for the nomad community of Tibet who
form over a third of Tibet's total population (six million by 1951 estimates).
As a part of new 'scientific' campaign, the nomads
have been ordered to quit migratory living and cattle rearing and to settle
down in pre-decided and newly developed colonies. Feeling uneasy in small
matchbox like brick houses and incapable of earning their living in the new
urban system, many among them have taken to drugs, gambling and alcoholism.
On November 26, 2012 Kunchok Tsering,18, a married
young man and a former nomad, forcefully resettled recently near Amchog town of
Gansu set himself on fire and died.
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Sadly, the world community has been mostly silent
Interestingly, it is not only the
Tibetans who suffer in today's China or who are protesting against the Han
colonial hegemony. Hundreds of protests from Xinjiang ('East Turkistan' until
China walked in during 1949) and Inner Mongolia have been reported in recent
years.
It may be interesting for socio-political observers
that not a single among the 99 Tibetan self-immolators tried to kill or hit any
Han settlers and occupants of their homeland against whose presence in Tibet
they have been protesting.
In contrast, when Chinese Han youths killed three
Uyghur migrant workers in Guagdong in June 2009, the Turk Muslims in Urumchi
and Kashgar hacked over 200 Han settlers and Chinese police.
However, in the retaliatory killings organised
jointly by the Chinese police and Han settlers in Xinjiang killed many more and
arrested over a thousand of Uyghurs.
A sad aspect of the ongoing spate of
self-immolations in Tibet today is the silence of the world community. In a
world where one self-immolation by a Tunisian street hawker could lead to a
chain of uprising in over a dozen countries, a century of lives ending in fire
balls do not indicate towards a peaceful future.
More than helpless kowtowing to the economic and
military power of Beijing today, the world community is sending this
unfortunate message to hundreds of struggling interest groups across the world
that only violent expression of anger would win them world attention.
(The author is a senior journalist and a
Tibetologist.)
Image: A protestor poses for a photograph as he takes part in a solidarity march from the Chinese Consulate to the United Nations Headquarters in support of Tibet in New York
Photographs: Lucas Jackson/Reuters
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