“He was limping and reported having heart problems and high blood pressure,” a friend, Jamyang Tsultrim, told Radio Free Asia. “His vision was also weak.”

A former monk, Jigme Gyatso was initially given a 15-year sentence for “leading a counterrevolutionary organization” after he and a group of friends secretly advocated Tibetan independence. The crimes he was accused of by a Chinese court in 1996 included his role in distributing pro-independence leaflets and hanging a banned Tibetan flag at the Ganden monastery near Lhasa, capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

[…] The authorities, in fact, added three years to Jigme Gyatso’s sentence after he joined other inmates in shouting out the name of the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader, as a delegation from the European Union toured their prison in 2004. According to Amnesty International, prison guards later retaliated by severely beating Jigme Gyatso and killing nine inmates.

Jigme Gyatso should not be confused with the monk and filmmaker of the same name who has been missing since last September.

Dechen Pemba of High Peaks Pure Earth contributed to this post.

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The Blue Book of Social Mentality, the latest annual report on the social mentality of China, analyzed respondents’ trust toward different people and organizations and drew a conclusion that trust in society is poor. The trust level was 59.7 points out of a full mark of 100 points.

In 2010, the trust level was 62.9 points.

[...] It showed that around 30 percent of the people polled trusted strangers on the street and about 24 percent trusted strangers online.

While People’s Daily attributes the distrust to “the lack of shared social values” among Chinese, a report from South China Morning Post suggests that the reason might lie in Chinese parenting:

In most cases, a higher number of Chinese parents admitted to telling ‘instrumental’ lies which entice the child into doing something.

The report, published in the International Journal of Psychology, found that in both countries [China and the U.S.] the practice of lying to one’s children to encourage behavioural compliance was rife and most frequently took the form of falsely threatening to leave a child alone in public if he or she refused to follow the parent.

[...] Cross-cultural differences were also seen: a larger proportion of the parents in China reported that they employed instrumental lie-telling to promote compliance, and a larger proportion approved of this practice, as compared to the parents in the US.

The arrests of six fake monks at the sacred Buddhist mountain Wutaishan will do little to solve the problem. From Josh Chin at The Wall Street Journal:

Some in China have argued that a revival of religion might help fill the moral vacuum that has been swirling at the center of Chinese society ever since the country shed its belief in communism to embrace market economics three decades ago. But with surveys showing trust eroding in China, news of a fake monk scheme at a sacred mountain suggests even religion isn’t immune to the no-holds-barred hustler ethos that has come to dominate so much of the country.

[...] The Temple for the God of Wealth and another temple called Foguo Zhongxin reportedly hired fake monks to trick tourists into donating money and buying expensive incense, Xinhua said, adding that the temples also fooled tourists into paying too much for ceremonies.

[...] The companies in charge of managing Wutaishan and some of China’s other sacred peaks have made headlines in recent years by announcing plans for initial public offerings on stock markets. Those announcements prompted Liu Wei, deputy director of China’s State Administration for Religious affairs, to issue a press release in June saying the administration would object to the commercial exploitation of religious resources.

See also One-Child Policy Accused of Breeding Mistrust, via CDT.

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According to the exile base of the Kirti Monastery in Dharamshala, Lobsang Namgyal set himself ablaze near the local police building in Zoege at around 6 am (local time). He passed away at the scene of his protest.

“Lobsang Namgyal, engulfed in flames, shouted slogans for the long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama as he ran towards the local police building,” Kirti Monastery said in a release citing sources in the region.

[…] “Chinese security personnel bundled away his body from the site and carried out his cremation without informing his family members,” Kirti Monastery said. “Only his ashes were handed over.”

In September 2012, Lobsang Namgyal had all of a sudden gone missing for two weeks prompting frantic searches from his family members and friends. It was later found out that he was taken into custody by Chinese security personnel for unknown reasons.

Coincidentally or otherwise, news of this 100th self-immolation emerged on the 100th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan Proclamation of Independence, after a ten-day delay. The organization Free Tibet reported that fear of reprisals from Chinese authorities had slowed confirmation of the event, and that Lobsang Namgyal’s family members have been followed and subjected to phone tapping or detention since his death. Authorities have detained dozens of Tibetans accused of involvement in earlier protests, while others have already received lengthy prison sentences. Other measures include travel restrictions and the confiscation of televisions and satellite dishes, aimed at controlling the flow of information: the delayed news of Lobsang Namgyal’s death, and reports that a Tibetan woman set fire to herself in Beijing in a previously unknown case as long ago as last September, suggest some success in this.

The protests and crackdown have dampened celebrations of Losar, the Tibetan lunar new year, which Tibetan prime-minister-in-exile Lobsang Sangay suggested should be marked by prayer instead of festivities. From Ben Blanchard at Reuters:

The Tibetan lunar new year is supposed to be a time for celebration, but many Tibetans who spoke to Reuters in Xiahe said there would be no entertainment this year.

“It really isn’t appropriate because of the self-immolations. So we’re not marking the new year,” said a Tibetan man who gave his name as Dorje. “In Tibet you don’t celebrate new year if you are in mourning.”

[…] Tibetan areas in China have been largely closed to foreign reporters and put under heavy security, making an independent assessment of the situation there hard.

Many of the monks said they were too scared to talk publicly about the Tibet issue. “I’m terrified. People have no idea how bad things are here,” said one monk.

The Associated Press described the self-immolation in Kathmandu on Wednesday:

Witnesses in Nepal said a man in monk’s robes entered a cafe in Katmandu’s Boudhanath district–home to many Tibetan Buddhist temples and monasteries–and asked to use the bathroom. After spending some time there, he went into the street and lit himself on fire. He ran a few steps, covered in flames and chanting slogans against China, before collapsing in front of the mammoth Boudhanath stupa, one of the holiest Buddhist sites in the country, surrounded by prayer wheels and decorated with colorful streams of flitting prayer flags.

Police official Keshav Adhikari said police and residents were able to put out the flames and rush the man to a hospital. Dozens of baton-wielding police surrounded the hospital where the man lay in critical condition. Adhikari said the man had yet to be identified, but appeared to be about 21 years old.

[…] Prasant Tamang, a waiter at the Golden Eye Cafe, said he found a gasoline bottle, a jacket and a bag in the cafe’s bathroom. Tamang said the man appeared normal and calm.

Some 20,000 Tibetan exiles live in Nepal, but some say they feel “suffocated” by growing Chinese influence. Local authorities have forbidden protests against China, and in February last year border guards reportedly turned a blind eye to plain-clothed Chinese men obstructing a CNN crew filming on the Nepalese side.

The Kathmandu protest has also been described as the 100th self-immolation, but officials from the Central Tibetan Administration told the AP that it was the 101st worldwide since 2009. This figure appears not to include Lobsang Namgyal. The International Campaign for Tibet counts five previous cases outside China’s borders since April 2008, including one earlier incident in the same part of Kathmandu. Two more possible cases within Tibet are excluded from both organizations’ tallies because accidental death could not be definitively ruled out.

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Lorang Konchok, 40, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve and has been stripped of his political rights for life. His nephew, Lorang Tsering, 31, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and has been stripped of his political rights for three years, according to the court verdict.

The two incited and coerced eight people to self-immolate, resulting in three deaths, the Intermediate People’s Court of the Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Aba found.

[…] Lorang Konchok used his status as a “geshe,” or a high-level Tibetan religious scholar, to convince monks and others to self-immolate, the court found.

Lorang Konchok sent information regarding self-immolations to Samtan ["a member of an overseas 'Kirti Monastery media liaison team'"]. The information was used by some overseas media as a basis for creating secessionist propaganda, according to the court.

Death with a two-year reprieve is generally commuted to life or fixed-term imprisonment at the end of the two years. According to Xinhua, this reduced sentence was given because Lorang Konchok had “recounted the main facts of the case, pled guilty and showed repentance during the trial”. His accounts have been used in state media to accuse overseas organizations and “the Dalai clique” of involvement in the protests.

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Former monk Tamdin Kyap, 23, burned himself to death in Luchu (in Chinese, Luqu) county in the Kanlho (Gannan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture late Thursday, the sources said.

“He set himself on fire at a site close to the Luchu river in Luchu county in protest against Chinese rule and succumed to his injuries,” a source in Tibet told RFA’s Tibetan service.

[…] A source from the region said that whenever someone self-immolated, Tamdin Kyab used to say “if he can do the same thing” and that “there is no worth living if His Holiness the Dalai Lama is not allowed to return to his homeland,” according to the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), the official name of the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamsala, India.

His death brings the self-immolation tally to 80 so far, with 16 reported this month. Five burnings were reported in one day alone — Nov 7.

See more on Tibet and the self-immolations there, including discussion of the 79th case, the challenges of verifying the reports, and the last words of several of the self-immolators.

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The March 16 death of Rigzin Phuntsog, 16, was seen by fellow monks and observers as a political protest against China’s heavy-handed controls on Tibetan Buddhism and provoked a standoff between security forces and monks.

Authorities accuse two monks, Tsering Tenzin and Tenchum, of plotting, instigating, and assisting in the self-immolation. A third, Drongdru, is accused of moving and hiding the injured monk, preventing him from receiving emergency treatment for 11 hours and eventually leading to his death.

One of the monks went on trial on Monday and two more will follow on Tuesday, a clerk with the Maerkang County People’s Court in Sichuan province’s Aba prefecture said.

The clerk, who gave only his surname, Zhou, said he did not know which monk went on trial Monday nor how long the trials would last, although the outcomes in such cases are usually predetermined by authorities.

Read more about the case via CDT.

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Tibetan rights groups say 16-year-old Rigzin Phuntsog set himself on fire in March to protest Chinese policies. China’s state run news agency Xinhua said Friday the court in Aba in Sichuan province is charging two of his fellow monks for plotting and assisting in the self-immolation.

A third monk is being charged with moving or hiding the injured Phuntsog, preventing him from getting medical care, which lead to his death.

Xinhua says the trial for Tsering Tenzin, Tenchum and Drongdru will take place early next week.

All the monks were members of Kirti Monastery.

The trial of these monks will take place next week in Sichuan. From the Washington Post:

The two-day trial will be held on Monday and Tuesday, Xinhua said, citing a statement from the Maerkang County People’s Court in Aba Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan province.

The monastery where the incident occurred, Ngaba Kirti in Sichuan province, is under tight guard by security forces.

The circumstances surrounding the monk’s death remain murky, and in June, China rejected pressure from a U.N. human rights panel to provide information about more than 300 of Kirti’s monks whose whereabouts it said are unknown since the monastery was raided in April.

The Foreign Ministry said only that monks were undergoing “legal education” — a reference to hours-long compulsory political lectures on the basics of the Chinese constitution, criminal law and regulations on religious affairs.

Source:

China Trying Three Monks in Self-Immolation Case- Voice of America

China Charges Three with Murder in Self-Immolation Death of Tibetan Buddhist Monk- Washington Post

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In a written response to questions from The Associated Press, the central government’s State Council Information Office expressed gratitude for the monks’ rescue efforts. But “it would bring more difficulties to disaster relief work if lots of unprofessional personnel were at the scene,” the statement added.

The state-run Xinhua news agency quoted the governor of Yushu Prefecture, where the quake was centered, as saying that he knew of no order to expel the monks. “We did not give or receive any orders of such kind,” the governor, Wang Yuhu, was quoted as saying. “Actually, we are very grateful for the role Tibetan monks played in the relief effort.”

Yushu Prefecture, where the quake hit hardest, is home to perhaps 200 Buddhist temples, including three that housed more than 500 monks each, Xinhua reported. But hundreds if not thousands of monks had streamed into Yushu from surrounding areas to assist in rescue work after the earthquake struck early on April 14.

Buddhist monks ran most of the early rescue operations in Jiegu, a city of 100,000 near the quake’s epicenter. As rescues of survivors dwindled, the monks have supervised mass cremations and the mandatory three-day period of mourning for the dead.

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More than 70 police, including members of the paramilitary People’s Armed Police, raided the dormitory of the Labrang monastery in western China that was Jigme’s home, sources told The Times.

Police vehicles, their sirens wailing, drew up outside the monastery just after midday. Armed officers poured out and entered Jigme’s cell near the front of the ancient edifice that sprawls up a hillside in Gansu province.

[...]Friends told The Times that he decided to return to his monastery after police, who had  visited his family, said he would be safe from arrest if he returned to his monastery. With the onset of winter, he decided to believe the authorities.

CDT’s previous coverage of Jigme’s story, found here, has details of his experiences in prison and includes this YouTube video of his testimony (in Tibetan):

Read more about the Lhasa riots here on CDT.

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Video shot secretly in the Kardze [in Chinese, Ganzi] Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture shows Buddhist monks at home in their monasteries.

Wei Si, a pseudonym for the journalist who recorded it, was interrogated on several occasions, and he feared he would face arrest.

In most shots, Wei tried to obscure the identities of the lamas by photographing them from the side. One senior monk, however, was defiant. “I am so old I am not afraid of anything,” he said, looking directly into the camera.

“I still support the Olympics—because it’s a good thing, and will bring honor to the Chinese people,” he said, referring to an international outcry against hosting the summer Olympic Games in Beijing given China’s heavy-handed treatment of Tibetans.

Waiting for the Dalai Lama:

We Are Not Free:

For more video coverage from RFA, including its nine-part series on Tibet, see the RFAVideo channel on YouTube.

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China warned on Saturday it would step up a controversial “re-education” campaign for Tibetans after a fresh protest showed a huge security crackdown had failed to extinguish nearly one month of unrest.

The statement in the state-run Tibet Daily newspaper called for Buddhist monks to become Chinese patriots, but activist groups said the heavy-handed techniques already employed in the campaign were inflaming tensions.

Efforts by authorities to “re-educate” monks at a monastery in Sichuan province in southwest China led to protests there on Thursday in which at least eight Tibetans were killed, the activist groups said.

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Using cell phones, these monks had photographed dead and injured participants during the March protests and disseminated the images to supporters outside Tibet, using connected computers and mobile devices. Jardin speaks with Tibet Connection radio producer Lhakpa Kyizom, who is based in Dharamsala, India, home to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile:

From the BBtv partial transcript:

The monks were interrogated and were forced at gunpoint to step on photographs of the Dalai Lama.

The security forces staged and videotaped the following scenes of the Kirti Monastery monks in their rooms. They forced some monks to hold up a portrait of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan national flag. A small monk was forced to hide half his body underneath the wooden floorboards and made to place his hands on the keyboard of a laptop computer.

One of the monks managed to make a secret phone call to the Kirti monks in Dharamsala, India. The monk in Tibet said:

“I am worried that the CCP is creating false evidence to try to show that His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the mastermind behind the protests in Tibet. The security forces forced us to act out these scenes against our will with guns pointed at us. I appeal to the people of the world, do not be persuaded by these fake videos.”

Chinese paramilitary police are searching other monasteries as well. According to the Times Online, eight people were killed and dozens wounded in a Donggu protest after a government inspection team entered the Tongkor monastery and tried to confiscate pictures of the Dalai Lama.

They searched the room of every monk, confiscating all mobile phones as well as the pictures.

When the officials had removed the photographs, a 74-year-old monk, identified as Cicheng Danzeng, tried to stop police from throwing the images on the ground… A young man working in the monastery, Cicheng Pingcuo, 25, also made a stand and both were arrested.

The team of officials then demanded that all the monks denounce the Dalai Lama, who fled China after a failed uprising in 1959. One monk, Yixi Lima, stood up and voiced his opposition, prompting the other monks to add their voices.

According to Xinhua, police were responding in Donggu to an attack on an official:

“Local officials exercised restraint during the riot and repeatedly told the rioters to abide by the law,” an official with the prefectural government said. “Police were forced to fire warning shots to put down the violence, since local officials and people were in great danger” and the rioters would not be persuaded to stop.

More on Tibetans connecting through online and mobile technology, from Xeni Jardin:

Tibetan exiles to protest Chinese rule via ‘net video
Wireless Works Wonders in Tibet
Connecting exiles online
Exporting Censorship

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Playing games.

(...)
Read the rest of Photo Series: The Modern Life Of Nuns and Monks (16 words)

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Two Chinese monks will be visiting Nalanda, seat of Buddhist teachings, in November to revive the traditional Sino-Indian cultural ties, the Nav Nalanda Mahavihar director Dr Ravindra Pant told Xinhua Thursday.

Nalanda, known for its rich cultural past, is located some 60 kilometer from Bodh Gaya in north Indian state of Bihar, where Lord Buddh attained enlightenment. [Full Text]

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Shi Yongxin, the abbot of Shaolin Temple, widely considered the birthplace of Chinese Kung Fu, spends most of his day greeting corporate executives, government officials and friends from all over the world and dealing with dinner invitations and business instead of shepherding all disciples.

When Henan officials presented Shi with a spectacular sports sedan valued at one million yuan (US$125, 000) for his contributions to the local tourism industry, it raised increasing doubts that Shi is a monk who is dedicated to fortune rather than religion, the Beijing News Reported on August 30. [Full Text]

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