« Voici un livre dense et tragique », écrit dans sa préface Robert Badinter. Il poursuit : « Ce que les flammes qui les brûlent proclament, c’est qu’ils ne peuvent plus supporter l’agression commise contre leur peuple, l’éradication de ses coutumes et de sa langue, le génocide culturel auxquels, dans le lâche silence des États, les autorités chinoises se livrent au Tibet. »
需要说明的是，上个月在台湾，我编著的《自焚藏人档案》由雪域出版社出版。但这本中文书与今天在法国发行的法文书《Immolations in Tibet: The shame of the world》不同。中文书是一本20多万字的记录之书，并收录有近两百幅照片，主要是对每一位自焚藏人生平的记录、回忆，及中共当局的相关政策的转载，等等。
而法文书《Immolations in Tibet: The shame of the world》的意义在于竭力的解释、沉痛的分析和直率的批评。这是章节目录：
Paris — A blogger, a taxi driver, a Communist Party official and a Buddhist monk. All of them Tibetan, and all of them driven to the desperate step of setting themselves on fire in protest at Chinese rule.
These and dozens of others are the subject of a new booklet written by Tsering Woeser, a famous Tibetan poet, essayist and fierce critic of the Chinese government’s rule over the sprawling Himalayan region.
“Immolations in Tibet: The shame of the world” — which so far is only being published in French and will be released in Paris on Thursday — is illustrated by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei.
In it, Woeser — who lives under surveillance in Beijing but has an extensive network of contacts in Tibetan areas — tries to get to the root of why at least 120 Tibetans have set themselves alight in recent years, most in China but some outside the country. Many, but not all, have died.
“Hunger strikes are a method of protest universally accepted and respected, whilst self-immolation is often ignored, because such suffering goes beyond the limits of what most people can conceive, even in their imagination,” she writes.
“Self-immolation is the most hard-hitting thing that these isolated protesters can do while still respecting principles of non-violence.”
The first recorded self-immolation in China was in February 2009, but Tibetan areas have seen an explosion in this violent form of protest since March 2011 when a monk set himself on fire at the revered Kirti monastery and died, sparking riots.
Beijing has always strongly condemned the acts and blames them on exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, saying he uses them to further a separatist agenda. It maintains that Chinese rule has brought development and riches to the plateau.
But Tibetans say the self-immolations are a response to increasing curbs on their religious and political freedoms, particularly since deadly 2008 riots in the Tibetan capital Lhasa that spread to neighbouring areas.
In the booklet, Woeser describes Tibetan regions as a “giant prison criss-crossed with armed soldiers and armoured vehicles”.
The reasons behind the protests, she adds, are diverse — authorities arresting people for watching videos of the Dalai Lama’s teachings, nomads forced off their pasture land to make way for mines and dams, surveillance cameras in monasteries, and many more.
“They think we’re scared of military repression, they’re wrong” said Tenzin Phuntsok, one of the victims whose last words were cited in the booklet.
And while monks and nuns were the first to set themselves on fire, a growing number of laypeople have started using this desperate, last-ditch form of protest.
She cites “two schoolgirls, three students, three workers, four retailers, one carpenter, a blogger, a tangka (traditional Tibetan painting) artist, a taxi driver, a retired Communist Party official.”
One 25-year-old farmer called Wangchen Norbu, Woeser says, went specifically to a photo studio to have his picture taken before he self-immolated.
Woeser, whose father was an army officer from China’s majority Han ethnic group and whose mother was a Tibetan Communist official, is widely known among Tibetans for her blog — translated into English on www.highpeakspureearth.com — as well as poems and essays.
As a result, she is under intense police scrutiny but unlike some other activists has so far avoided arrest and is still relatively free to move around the country.
But Woeser, who is in her late 40s, admits that a booklet published abroad could get her into trouble with Chinese authorities.
“For a long time, I have felt like I’m at the edge of a precipice, and I could fall at any time,” she told AFP by email from her hometown of Lhasa, where she has been staying since June.
“And writing this kind of book… is definitely dangerous. But I don’t yet know how dangerous.”
“I’m closely watched every day, 24 hours a day,” she added, pointing out that three to four cars full of plainclothes policemen are parked in front of her compound daily, a camera sits on her flat’s roof, and security officers follow her every steps.
“As for when I’m in Beijing, just this year I’ve been put under house arrest three times, which put together lasted more than a month.”
当我的这本新书完成之后，因为我在书中引述了同样是伟大的人权卫士、世界著名艺术家艾未未关于藏人自焚的一段评论——“西藏是拷问中国、国际社会人权和公正标准的最严厉问卷，没有人可以回避，可以绕过去。目前为止，没有人不受辱蒙羞。”——出版社希望请艾未未为这本关于藏人自焚的书设计封面，而艾未未当即给我回信说：
