The former monk, Norbu Damdrul, was the eighth monk or former monk to set himself on fire to protest China since March. All the self-immolations have taken place in Tibetan areas of Sichuan Province that lie in the remote region Tibetans call Amdo. At least four Tibetans have killed themselves in the wave of self-immolations, which scholars of modern Tibet say are a new and startling protest strategy by monks.

The attempt at self-immolation by Norbu was the seventh one this year in the town of Aba, called Ngaba by Tibetans. All of them have involved monks from Kirti Monastery, an institution that was a rallying point during the widespread Tibetan uprising in 2008.

Reports by advocacy groups say at least 10 Tibetans were killed by security forces during protests in Aba that spring. Many of the bodies were brought into Kirti, where monks took digital photographs of the corpses and transmitted them to people outside China. The photographs have been shown to foreign reporters visiting Kirti’s sister monastery in Dharamsala, India, the seat of power of the Tibetan government-in-exile and the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader.

Since the 2008 uprising, tension has built around Kirti Monastery, and at least 300 monks were taken away by security forces one night this April. They were sent to undergo “patriotic re-education,” according to reports by Tibetan groups, and many have not returned.

Also reported today, a nun has died from self-immolation, the first woman to do so. From VOA:

A Tibetan woman has killed herself by self-immolation three kilometers outside Ngaba County of eastern Tibet (Chinese: Aba County, Aba Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province) on Monday around 1PM local time, said Tibetan exile sources with contacts in the area.

Tenzin Wangmo, the 20-year-old nun of Mame Dechen Chokorling nunnery (also known as Mame nunnery), called for the return of Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and freedom for Tibet when she set herself on fire. She is reported to have died at the scene. The nun was from Nyitse family of Shakoma village in Ngaba.

(Listen to the report here)

Read more about self-immolations via CDT, including a recent report: “News of Tibetan Self-Immolation Incidents Censored Online“

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C Raja Mohan: At a time when China is getting stronger, your talks with them have broken down. China is putting pressure on most governments in the world to stop their interaction with His Holiness. Has negotiating with them become more difficult as China grows stronger? How do you see the prospect of engaging the Chinese?

Lobsang Sangay: Number one: for India and Indian people, China is new. As Tibetans, we don’t look at China and the Chinese people that way. We are genetically disposed to dealing with China as we have been next to each other for the last 2,000 years. They have invaded us, we have invaded them, sometimes we have chased them out, and sometimes we have settled issues amicably, sometimes violently. We have seen ups and downs. When China invaded Tibet, the 13th Dalai Lama fled to India, to Kalimpong. We fought hard and were successful in making the return of His Holiness the 13th Dalai Lama to Tibet possible. So we have done it before and we are confident that we will do it again.

Second is Buddhist philosophy. We believe our identity is based on Buddhist philosophy, which is 2,000-plus years old while Communism is just 100 years old. We know we will live through it and we will return to Tibet and restore freedom. At the moment, there is this tunnel vision in seeing China as a great military power and a growing economic power. At the moment, they call me names and call me illegal. But I am the democratically elected leader, hence legal. It is tough at the moment but in the long run, we will prevail. [...]

Amitabh Sinha: There’s one viewpoint that in recent years, the Dalai Lama was becoming more of a problem in initiating a dialogue with China than a solution. Do you think that will change with your appointment?

Lobsang Sangay: When you say Dalai Lama is more of a problem, it’s a narrative and you have to look at the source of the narrative, which is clearly Beijing. Why is Dalai Lama the source of the problem? He has advocated peace, non-violence, moderation, autonomy within China. So what is the problem? The problem is Beijing’s hardline attitude. I will continue the same middle-way policy—I ran my election on that and people voted for me supporting that policy. I am familiar with Chinese propaganda and how the system works. It’s all scripted—Dalai Lama was the problem and hence they were not talking to us. Now if they want to change the script and say Lobsang Sangay is the solution, then I will be happy to facilitate a dialogue because I have said this over and over again: we are willing to negotiate with the Chinese government anytime, anywhere. I have a 16-year track record to prove it. When I didn’t have to, I have talked to hundreds and hundreds of Chinese scholars at Harvard University. We are sincere, we believe in dialogue.

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The official Xinhua News Agency said Zhang Qingli, the region’s highest-ranking official, is being moved to another position which it did not identify. It said he will be replaced by Chen Quanguo, a longtime party official in the eastern province of Henan who last served as governor of Hebei province surrounding Beijing.

Like all of Tibet’s party chiefs, Chen is not Tibetan but a member of China’s majority Han ethnic group.

No reason was given for the move, although Zhang has served five years in the position, roughly the standard term for provincial officials.

China’s policies for Tibet are set at the highest levels in Beijing and there is no reason to believe the move heralds any major change.

Read more about Zhang Qingli via CDT.

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The footage shows that Xi delivered his speech from a viewing platform erected in a vast new square in front of the Potala Palace, the Dalai Lama’s former residence in Lhasa. Banners above the stage show that the speech was part of the ceremonies marking what China calls “the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Tibet,” a reference to China’s assumption of sovereignty over Tibet in 1951 following its invasion a year earlier. There are frequent shots of the audience in the square, which included, according to the official Chinese media, “more than 20,000 Tibetans of all walks of life.”

But the footage does not support this claim. For one thing, only two monks are shown among the 20,000 people in the audience—one of them is shown repeatedly—suggesting that Tibetans from a “walk of life” that is integral to Tibetan society were not invited. As for women, there are many in the audience, but among the 200 or so senior Chinese and Tibetan officials who are shown seated on the viewing platform, all but five are men.

[...] Some aspects of these events cannot be seen from the television footage alone; one has to be there on the ground. After the ceremony in 2005, we were all allowed out on the streets once the formal events had ended, and so I went to the Post Office, near the exit of the square, and joined a vast crowd of curious Tibetans to watch the participants as they left. But what we saw coming out of the square had not been visible on the television screen: hundreds of armed troops followed by armored personnel carriers, riot control vehicles, water-cannon trucks, barbed-wire laying machines, vehicles with gun turrets and other forms of military hardware.

The military vehicles and the troops were not visible in the footage of the ceremony this year either, but they were surely there again. Perhaps there is an underlying view that all Tibetans are rebels thirsting for a war. If so, it would explain why the head of China’s army had been sent to sit next to Xi Jinping on the stage during the ceremony. It would also explain why there were no chairs: presumably they are seen as potential weapons in the hands of imagined Tibetan rioters, more threatening than plastic stools.

Everyone can understand why China is proud of improving Tibetan infrastructure and wants to maintain its rule over Tibet, but it is not clear why its leaders, or even ordinary Chinese, expect forcing Tibetans to stage rituals of mass gratitude to Xi Jinping and the Chinese government not to fuel resentment. In any event, resentment seems to be spreading among Tibetans: last week on August 15 another Tibetan burnt himself to death, others say they have been tortured after staging minor protests, at least three of the 13 Tibetan areas in China remain closed to foreigners, and the state’s officially selected Panchen Lama cannot visit a monastery without a major security operation to prevent unrest.

Watch Xi’s full speech in English here:

Read more about Beijing’s officially-selected Panchen Lama’s trip through Tibetan regions, via Bloomberg.

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The Karmapa’s aides said they planned to use the money to buy land for a monastery in India. But the Indian media fanned rumors that he was a Chinese spy.

To Tibetans and to scholars of Tibetan Buddhism, the notion is absurd. The Karmapa fled Tibet when he was 14, climbing out a window of his monastery to a waiting car, avoiding military checkpoints and riding a horse through the Nepalese outback to reach India. The escape was reminiscent of the Dalai Lama’s dash over the icy passes of the Himalayas in 1959.

But the rumors about the 17th Karmapa persisted in part because the Chinese government has recognized him as the legitimate leader of the Kagyu tradition, and avoided denouncing him even after his flight to India. That is in marked contrast to the Chinese denunciations of the Dalai Lama as a “splittist.”

This puts the Karmapa in a singular position, said Robert J. Barnett, director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia University.

“The Karmapa is perfectly placed to be someone who could broker a solution in the future,” Mr. Barnett said. “This is one of the rather rare issues where exiles and those in Tibet are in agreement. They have very wide respect for the Karmapa.”

Read more about the Karmapa and about Tibetan Buddhism via CDT.

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China accused the United States on Sunday of “grossly” interfering in its internal affairs and seriously damaging relations after President Barack Obama met exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama at the White House.

Obama met the Nobel Prize laureate for 45 minutes, praising him for embracing non-violence while reiterating that the United States did not support independence for Tibet.

China, which accuses the Dalai Lama of being a separatist who supports the use of violence to set up an independent Tibet, reacted swiftly, saying Obama’s meeting had had a “baneful” impact, and summoning a senior U.S. diplomat in Beijing.

“This action is a gross interference in China’s internal affairs, hurts the feelings of the Chinese people and damages Sino-U.S. relations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement released in the early hours of Sunday.

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Tashi Rabten, an editor of banned magazine Eastern Snow Mountain, was sentenced on June 2 by a court in Aba prefecture, a heavily ethnic Tibetan part of Sichuan province next to the Tibet Autonomous Region proper, said the International Campaign for Tibet, a London-based group critical of Chinese policies.

China’s ruling Communist Party has faced persistent unrest in Tibetan regions of the country’s west, where many residents chafe at the government’s controls on their Buddhist religion and resent the growing presence of ethnic Han Chinese people.

The banned journal “was the first published Tibetan language commentary about the protests and crackdown from 2008 onwards, offering a critical perspective reflecting a prevailing sense of despair and loss, but also a way forward,” said an statement from the group issued late on Friday.

The statement did not say what charge Tashi Rabten was jailed for. But three other Tibetans who worked for the journal were jailed last year on charges of inciting separatism, an accusation that the ruling Communist Party often levels at Tibetans campaigning for self-determination for their homeland.

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Following elections in March, Mr Sangay emerged as the surprise front-runner to become Kalon Tripa – a position often referred to as “prime minister” of a “Tibetan government-in-exile” headed by the Dalai Lama.

But the new Kalon Tripa is expected to have to shoulder much of the authority previously borne by the Dalai Lama, who, at the age of 75, has announced he is to give up his political role.

He will have to lead a global movement that campaigns for Tibetan rights and freedoms under Chinese rule. He’ll also manage the ramshackle “government-in-exile” that sits on a dusty hillside in northern India, in the town of Dharamsala.

But his “government” has neither country nor international recognition. And the exiled Tibetans appear to have elected a man who has almost no experience of his homeland, and none of government.

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For this is not the first time that the Dalai Lama of Tibet has issued a decree announcing that a younger, largely unknown man is to take over as the political leader of the Tibetan people. It happened before—in 1679. To explain why this detail of history matters to the Chinese government requires a little background.

Until the Chinese army took over his country in 1950, leading him to flee into exile nine years later, the current Dalai Lama, who is the fourteenth of his line, held political authority over Tibet. Historically, Dalai Lamas were not always recognized as having that power: the first four Dalai Lamas only had spiritual status as leading Buddhist teachers of their time. It was the Fifth Dalai Lama who was first given the authority to rule Tibet, following its invasion by a Mongol warlord who was a ferocious supporter of the Dalai Lama’s sect and so placed him on the throne, when he was twenty-five years old. That was in the Water-Horse year of the 11th Cycle, or 1642. The Fifth seems to have been extraordinarily capable, because under his rule, backed up by the Mongols’ army, Tibet expanded into a vast and unified state covering most of the Tibetan plateau, with an organized bureaucracy, tax, and census system.

Potala Palace, built by the Fifth Dalai Lama and his regent Sangye Gyatso in the late seventeenth century, Lhasa, Tibet

But it is the events at the end of the Fifth Dalai Lama’s reign that seem to be of particular concern to Chinese analysts at the moment. After 43 years of rule, the Fifth announced that he had appointed a young Tibetan as the Sde-ba or head of the government, a position similar to that of regent. He had appointed such officials before, but now he was near the end of his life and was returning to a contemplative existence as a meditator and a scholar (he wrote at least thirty works in his lifetime, including some on the art of government). In 1679, he issued a decree announcing the appointment of the official, called Sangye Gyatso, who later became one of Tibet’s most famous writers.

Because of its exceptional importance, the Fifth signed the decree not just with his name or seal, but with the full imprint of both his hands, dipped in gold and stamped upon the document. The decree was made into a scroll, 12 feet long, calligraphed on yellow silk with a painting of a curling dragon holding a wish-fulfilling jewel in its claws underneath the text, protector deities and snow-lions at its foot, and a portrait of the Dalai Lama at its head. It is one of the marks of Tibet’s national tragedy that this scroll, a pinnacle of Tibetan decorative art and political history, is no longer in Tibet: it is in exile too, in New York, having been carried out by a Tibetan family when they fled from Tibet fifty years ago.

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This means that a 350-year era of Tibetan history will come to an end, and Dalai Lamas will no longer be the political leaders of the Tibetan people.

Instead, the leader of the Tibetan government, which now exists only in exile in India and is charged with “rehabilitating Tibetan refugees and restoring freedom and happiness in Tibet,” will be their prime minister. The last two prime ministers have been chosen democratically by the 150,000 exiles, and an election was held to choose the next one on March 20. (The front-runner is a 42-year-old Tibetan named Lobsang Sangay who graduated from Harvard Law School; however, the final results won’t be announced until late April.) The winner would become the ultimate leader of Tibetan exiles if this proposal is accepted by the exile parliament, which alone has authority to change the exile constitution. But so far 42 of the 43 exile parliamentarians, meeting in northern India this week, are still insisting that the Dalai Lama remain in power, though they have agreed to set up a committee to examine the issue.

Then again, the most important reaction to the Dalai Lama’s statement will come not from the exiles, but from the 5.5 million Tibetans in China, whose willingness to accept Chinese rule is at the root of the China-Tibet question. They constitute just .4 percent of China’s population, but, like Mongols in Inner Mongolia and Uighurs in Xinjiang, inhabit vast areas of China where the central government’s territorial claims are weakest. Each of these peoples has supporters in large numbers among fellow ethnics living just across China’s borders with India, Nepal, Central Asia, Mongolia, and elsewhere. As a result, their ability to draw the worried glance of Beijing and so impact Chinese politics is far out of proportion to their actual numbers. The authorities respond to even slight indications of dissent among these nationalities with disproportionate force and angry rhetoric.

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