The monk set himself on fire Saturday inside his room in Kirti monastery in Sichuan province’s mountainous Aba county, RFA said. Carrying a Tibetan Buddhist prayer flag, he ran toward the monastery entrance before collapsing and was rushed to hospital where he died, the report said.

A man who answered the phone at Kirti said the monastery was open to the public, but hung up when questioned about the self-immolation report. Calls to local government and police offices rang unanswered.

The London-based advocacy group Free Tibet also reported Lobsang Thokmey’s self-immolation. It said a large force of security personnel at the county hospital had removed his body.

Confirming claims long circulating among Tibetan activists, the official Global Times newspaper last week said that family members of those who self-immolate were barred from retrieving their relatives’ bodies, while neighbors were not allowed to offer condolences and monks were barred from offering prayers for the dead.

Phayul provides more details on the monk’s self-immolation:

According to the Dharamshala based Kirti Monastery, Lobsang Thokmey doused his body with kerosene in front of his monastic quarters in the west of the Kirti Monastery and started running towards the east.

“Lobsang Thokmey was in flames as he began running with the Buddhist flag in his hands,” the Kirti Monastery said in a release. “Before he could reach the main gate, he fell on the ground.”

“A large number of Chinese security personnel arrived at the hospital soon after Lobsang Thokmey was admitted and later forcibly took away the deceased’s body to the regional headquarters of Barkham,” the same source said.

It is not yet known what slogans Lobsang Thokmey raised during his self-immolation protest.

Lobsang Thokmey is the 108^th Tibetan to set himself ablaze since the beginning of the protests that began in February 2009. In the 109th case, a Tibetan woman has also self-immolated in Sichuan province’s Ngaba prefecture. These incidents come amid the continuing crackdown in Tibet. From Radio Free Asia:

Kunchok Wangmo, 31, set herself ablaze in Dzoege (Ruo’ergai) county just before midnight last Wednesday but news of the burning was hushed up by Chinese police who had grabbed her body, cremated it and handed over the remains to her family, the sources said.

Her husband, Dolma Kyab, was detained when he refused to comply with an order by the Chinese authorities who wanted to blame the self-immolation on a family squabble, one exiled Tibetan with contacts in the region told RFA’s Tibetan Service.

Kunchok Wangmo is the 15th woman to self-immolate since the burnings began in February 2009 aimed at challenging Chinese rule in Tibetan areas and calling for the return of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India.

The main road in Ngaba was declared last year as “Heroes Street” after it became the epicenter of the burnings.

See also Flames of Protest: The History of Self-Immolation, via CDT.

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Tsezung Kyab, 27, torched himself in front of the main prayer hall of the Shitsang Monastery in Luchu region of eastern Tibet at around 1:30 pm (local time). He passed away at his protest site, the same place where his cousin Pema Dorjee, 23, passed away in his self-immolation protest on December 8, 2012.

[…] This is the second self-immolation protest in Tibet in as many days. [On Sunday], Phagmo Dhondup, a Tibetan in his 20’s set himself ablaze near the Jhakhyung Monastery in Palung region of eastern Tibet. His condition and whereabouts are not known.

On Tuesday, news emerged of another case on Monday, in Ngaba. From Phayul:

Sangdag, a monk of the Dhiphu Monastery, set himself ablaze on a main road in Ngaba district at around 10 am (local time).

According to the exile base of Kirti Monastery in Dharamshala, Sangdag’s present condition is unknown.

“Soon after Sangdag carried out his fiery protest, Chinese security personnel arrived at the scene and doused the flames on his body,” Kirti Monastery said in a release today. “He was taken a hospital in Ngaba but shortly after that the Chinese police bundled him away to another place.”

These protests brought the total number of Tibetan self-immolations within China to 107 since the start of 2009. Six other cases have occurred in India and Nepal, while two further incidents in Sichuan province are disputed on the grounds that they may have been accidental. The International Campaign for Tibet publishes perhaps the clearest and most comprehensive list of Tibetan self-immolations, though at time of writing it has not yet been updated to include Sangdag’s.

Another report from Phayul last week illustrated the risks faced by anyone suspected of sharing information about the protests. A 20-year-old Tibetan man was reportedly sentenced to two years in prison after two photographs of self-immolations were found on his phone, along with other images:

“He was apprehended by Chinese security personnel during a routine check near the city mosque,” the release cited a Tibetan source as saying. “Upon checking his mobile phone, the Chinese police found two photos of self-immolation protests, images of Tibetan national flag, and other photos showing Chinese atrocities on Tibetans.”

The release added that he was kept in various prisons for over a week during which he was constantly interrogated. Topden was later sentenced to two years in prison on charges of being a “reactionary, inciting the public, and threatening social stability.” He is currently being kept in a prison in Toelung region.

[…] In December last, four Tibetans were arrested in Rebkong region of eastern Tibet on similar charges of storing “reactionary” materials in the phone after they were found keeping photos of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in their phones.

This is just the latest in a string of sentences passed on people accused of involvement in the protests. The crackdown is also said to have included confiscation of TV equipment, restrictions on travel, withdrawal of government benefits from families of self-immolators, and beatings and arrests.

Over the longer term, China has attempted to secure its rule over Tibetan areas with economic development. Xinhua’s China View reported the official removal of 130,000 people from poverty in the Tibetan Autonomous Region last year, pointing to long-distance trucking as a key driver of prosperity:

At The New York Times’ Latitude blog, Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore acknowledged that Tibet has seen some material gains. But the settlement of nomadic herders has been a core policy to “raise living standards”, and this, she writes, has left many with government stipends and alcohol in place of traditional livelihoods and communities.

The Chinese government has […] undermined Tibetan nomads’ claim to land by ordering the fencing of private pastures and resettling populations, often forcibly. Since that campaign started in the 1990s — accelerating over the last decade — more than one million Tibetan herders across the Tibetan Autonomous Region and Tibetan-populated regions of western China have been resettled. According to the state-run China Daily, the government spent almost $550 million from 2009 to 2012 on the resettlement of Tibetan nomads in Qinghai.

Herders have traded their livestock and their lifestyle for a small annual stipend. They often relocate to compounds in town — like the colorful ones I saw — where local officials can monitor their activities more easily. “People who live in these houses look at it like a jail,” one young Tibetan told me. “The community is gone.”

What’s left of it is being turned into a social underclass. Many older Tibetan nomads are illiterate, and aside from irregular construction work there is little they can find to support themselves once their stipend runs out. Those who cannot speak Chinese complain of being treated with contempt; they say shopkeepers of ethnic Han origin order them not to touch produce.

NPR’s Talk of the Nation (via CDT) recently hosted a discussion of past and present self-immolations with Columbia University’s Robert Barnett, Oxford University’s Michael Biggs and the International Campaign for Tibet’s Bhuchung Tsering. A blog post translated at High Peaks Pure Earth, on the other hand, offers a glimpse of the ongoing debate on the Tibetan web. Its author, Naktsang Nulo, dismisses the accusation that any but the youngest and most impressionable self-immolators could have been fooled into committing such an act, but implores others not to follow their lead and urges the Dalai Lama to issue a similar appeal.

What I want to state and request again and again from my heart and mind with deep sadness is that no matter what savage and brutal rule you may have to endure, please do not resort to self-immolation. You may come up with any other methods of resistance and struggle, but please do not set yourself on fire. I want to request again that no matter how pure your aims and hopes are, please do not resort to self-immolation.

[…] There are many ways to fight for freedom, to fulfill one’s aspirations and to struggle against the government. At a time when there is a so-called good leadership of the Communist Party, good governance from the administration, good economic development and good livelihood for the people, it seems that an individual, a group of people or a nationality can demand rights from the government, regional authorities or even the Communist Party by submitting appeals and through legal channels. It appears that one may not necessarily have to resort to self-immolation. Perhaps these are just the words of someone like me who does not know much. But what I want to request again is that no matter what savage and brutal rule you may have to endure, please do not set yourself on fire. Whatever methods of struggle and resistance one must adopt, do not resort to self-immolation. No matter how pure and incomparable your hopes and faiths are please do not set yourself on fire. I particularly want to request our root guru, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, to pray for the sea of suffering in Tibet and kindly make a statement to ask the brave Tibetans not to self-immolate.

In an iSunAffairs Weekly article translated and republished at Phayul, New York-based political science professor Ming Xia examined the question of whether such a call would be effective or desirable. Xia’s primary focus, however, was the lack of support for Tibetans among Han intellectuals in China, which Andrew Jacobs also examined at The New York Times in November. The two groups face shared obstacles, Xia argued, but many Chinese fail to recognize this because of state propaganda or revulsion at the act of self-immolation viewed from a non-Buddhist perspective.

First as intellectuals living in the free world, we must be aware of the fact that the Chinese intellectuals and Tibetans are victims of the same authoritarian rule and that they are both facing a profound identity crisis. It raises a fundamental question for Tibetans, which is whether Tibetans would continue to be Tibetans if there were no Buddhism. And as for the Chinese intellectuals, the question is whether they would still be “intellectuals” if they do not have the right to free and independent thinking and the right to pursue truth. Since the two challenges are closely interlinked, it is therefore incumbent upon the Chinese intellectuals to pay close attention and support the demand of the Tibetan people.

[…] No doubt, resorting to self-immolation is not a good option. Tibetans today, however, do not have the luxury to choose between “good” and “bad”. Tibetans can only chose between “bad” and “worse.” Losing their religious faith is worse than self-immolation for Tibetans. The Chinese Communist regime wantonly insult the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, ban his portrait to be hung in the temples, expel the monks devoted to the Dalai Lama from their monasteries, establish “Temple Management Authority” and “Work Units” in the monasteries, and send millions of copies of the so-called “four leaders” (Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao) to the temples. All of this represents a serious threat to the religious freedom of the Tibetan people.

[This post was edited to remove a link to an outdated NPR story.]

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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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A 27-year-old Tibetan man has died after setting himself on fire today in China protest. Tsering Dhondup self-immolated today around at 3.15pm local time in Drachen Yultso village, Chungchu township in Ngaba county (Chinese: Aba).

His father and many of his relatives are known to be working Chinese government officials.

Today’s incident brings the total number of self-immolations since 2009 to 97.  including 81 last year in protest against China’s strict control over Tibet’s Buddhist culture and a suffocating security presence in Tibetan regions.

This comes less than a week after a Tibetan man died after self-immolating in Gansu province. At The Guardian, Tania Branigan reports that seven Tibetan “abetters” have been detained for organizing and encouraging self-immolations, including one that occurred in Gansu in October:

Chinese police have detained seven people for helping persuade a Tibetan villager to set fire to himself, state media report. The move is the latest attempt by authorities to curb the spate of self-immolations in western China.

[...]The state news agency Xinhua said officers in Gansu province, north-west China, believed the fatal self-immolation in October of 26-year-old Sangye Gyatso, in Hezuo city, was “masterminded by key members of the Tibetan Youth Congress of the overseas Dalai clique”, according to a statement.

The officers allege a friend of Sangye Gyatso who had joined a monastery in India – where many Tibetans and their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, live in exile – had introduced him to ideas about Tibetan independence when he made a trip home to China.

The trend of self-immolation in protest of Chinese policies have been consuming the lives of Tibetans since 2009, though the frequency of occurrences spiked in late 2011. A scholarly debate has emerged around the efficacy and religious orthodoxy of this method of dissent. Recently Wang Lixiong, husband of prominent Tibetan blogger Woeser, analyzed the last words of self-immolators in an attempt to uncover their motives.

Also see prior CDT coverage of Tibet protest and self-immolation.

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America’s ambassador to China has publicly acknowledged a late September visit to China’s western frontier, a region which has seen numerous self-immolations by Tibetans in protest of Chinese rule, according to The New York Times:

The ambassador, Gary F. Locke, visited two Tibetan monasteries on Sept. 26 as part of a trip to western China. The monasteries, which have not been involved in the 55 self-immolations across the Tibetan plateau since 2009, are in Aba Prefecture of Sichuan Province, the area where almost two-thirds of the Tibetans who have set themselves on fire lived.

It was Mr. Locke’s first trip as ambassador to a part of China where most of the people are ethnic Tibetans.

…

“I went to Aba Prefecture to see it for myself,” Mr. Locke said in a brief statement in response to questions from The New York Times. “I was struck by the unique Tibetan culture and met many ethnic Tibetans to learn more about how they live and work, such as an 88-year-old monk at one of the monasteries I visited. Ethnic diversity adds richness to a society.”

He continued, “I hope others will make the same visit.”

A U.S. State Department spokeswoman also confirmed Locke’s trip on Tuesday, according to the report. The New York Times published the above photo, which originally appeared on Twitter and which shows Locke shaking hands with a Tibetan monk. The South China Morning Post published the photo as well, and reported that Locke may have made the trip with Beijing’s approval:

Tibetan settlements in China are often off-limits to foreigners. The then executive vice-minister of the Communist Party Central Committee’s United Front Work Department, Zhu Weiqun , said last year that China would “never allow foreign forces to interfere in China’s internal affairs by any means”, when asked whether China would let the European Union send an independent diplomatic team to Tibet.

“I never believe it can settle any problem or bring good to its people for foreign forces to interfere in the internal affairs of another country,” he said. “On the contrary, it will intensify the contradiction and even lead to wars.”

Analysts said they believed Locke’s trip to Aba was made with Beijing’s tacit approval, or at least the approval of the foreign ministry, and signified that Beijing wanted to adopt a more flexible approach in dealing with Tibetans.

Locke has enjoyed a positive image during his tenure in Beijing, receiving praise in the media and among Chinese netizens for his frugality on more than one occasion. No comment has emerged so far from China’s Foreign Ministry, but Sina.com published its take on the news:

Since taking office as the first Chinese-American envoy to China, Gary Locke has expressed too much of his “great interest” about the so-called human rights situation in China. Analysts say Locke, putting on an act of being low-profile and close to the grassroots, will present a stark contrast with some Chinese officials. Locke has thus devised the image campaign to touch ordinary people’s soft sopts and also show America as a “democracy” model to the Chinese people.

What he has done thus far since he set foot on the Chinese soil is well beyond a professional diplomat’s scope of mission. Rather, as a politician and show person, he seems so accustomed to reaching out to something that could and would not fall within his territory. Much to his dismay, many achievements he has been seeking after are actually beyond attainment.

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“I urge both the monks and the lay Tibetans of the area not to do anything that might be used as a pretext by the local authorities to massively crack down on them,” the exiled spiritual leader said in a statement posted on his website Saturday.

Clashes erupted at the Kirti monastery in China’s southwest Sichuan province after a monk set himself on fire and died last month, according to the International Campaign for Tibet, a New York-based rights group.

Police unleashed trained dogs on residents outside the monastery and beat people when they tried to prevent forces from entering the compound on Tuesday, the rights group said in a Wednesday statement.

“I am very concerned that this situation, if allowed to go on, may become explosive with catastrophic consequences,” the Dalai Lama said.

He also called on the international community to persuade the Chinese leadership to exercise restraint.

The statement said the monastery, housing 2,500 monks, was completely surrounded by Chinese armed forces, who at one point prevented vital food and other supplies from entering the compound.

Witnesses report that the 2500 monks at Kirti monastery have been surrounded by the Chinese military and are facing food shortages. From the Tibet Post:

According to latest confirmed information, Chinese security forces have cordoned the monastery and additional contingents of armed security forces (estimated to be around 800) have been brought in on 9 April 2011 to reinforce security clampdown in Ngaba County. The movement of the monks is totally restricted with no one being allowed to go in or come out of the monastery. Gaps in boundary barb wire in north of the monastery have been closed with concrete walls. Since the cordon, monks are facing shortage of food and depend on voluntary food offerings by locals through the monastery administration. Authorities have prohibited the faithful local Tibetans from offering food to monks. Reports from ground indicate that if the situation remains same, over 2500 monks in the monastery will face starvation which will most probably lead to a mass revolt. In such an event security forces will unleash its deadly assault leading to extrajudicial killings as it happened three years ago on 16 March 2008 in Ngaba County. The lamas and monastery officials have been able to maintain peace so far by advising the monks to remain calm despite the ongoing repression.

In the aftermath of Phuntsok’s protest and subsequent show of solidarity by monks of Kirti Monastery, the authorities have taken drastic measures to bring the monks under control. According to latest information, since the begining of April 2011, security forces who were earlier surrounding the monastery have entered into the campus. They have stopped elderly monks from even walking the outer circumambulation path (Kora), and made observation posts (with binoculars) on stepped platforms of stupas in the monastery. The guards keep round the clock vigilance of activities in the monastery. Over 33 people have been arrested out of which 22 people (8 monks and 16 lay people) continue to be under detention.

Apparently the Chinese government intends to imprison the Kirti monks and send them to re-education camps. There are reports of police brutality and extra judicial killings and police brutality. From Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy:

There is a high probability of extrajudicial killings to take place at Ngaba County, Sichuan, according to latest confirmed information received by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD). High tension has prevailed between local Tibetans and Chinese security forces at the Kirti Monastery which might prompt Chinese security forces to open firing.

According to information received from reliable sources by the TCHRD, today around 12 pm (Beijing Time) additional large contingents of armed Chinese police vehicles arrived at the Kirti Monastery. Upon seeing the vehicles local Tibetans rushed towards the monastery to protect the monks. The Chinese authorities have earlier announced that the monks will be relocated on 12 April to another location for “legal education” and “patriotic reeducation”. The students who usually take the route to their schools passing through the vicinity of Kirti monastery have been ordered by the officials not to take their usual route begining from 8 April 2011. The locals suspected that the police vehicles have arrived at the monastery to transport the monks. They blocked the forces from entering the monastery which broke into heated tension between the locals and armed police. The police started to brutally beat some of the Tibetans and let lose police dogs upon the crowd. Upon seeing tension outside the monastery, monks inside were blocked from coming out by the police stationed inside . In view of the high tension, senior monks in the monastery management came out to diffuse tension by pursuading the crowd to maintain calm. Although tension has been temporarily difussed, additional Tibetans arrived to join the crowd. The local Tibetans have now blocked all the roads leading out of Ngaba County and maintain vigil.

The Dalai Lama and other Tibet advocacy groups are asking international organizations, including the U.N., to respond to the human rights violations taking place at Ngaba.

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