CDT previously reported on two recent self-immolations, one of which was Kunchok Wangmo, a Tibetan woman. The Guardian reports Chinese authorities are now saying that the immolation was linked to domestic violence:
Exile groups said police seized and cremated Kunchok Wangmo’s body and handed her husband Dolma Kyab the ashes. They detained him only after he refused to blame the self-immolation on domestic problems.
Alistair Currie, spokesman for the Free Tibet campaign, said it was seeking further information but remained sceptical about police claims.
“We have no reason to trust Chinese authorities and experience shows they are actively seeking to denigrate those who conduct these protests … This would fit in with that,” he said.
Police in central China are denying that Kunchok Wangmo set herself on fire to protest Chinese rule in Tibet. From The Voice of America:
Tuesday’s Communist Party-controlled Global Times quotes a police official in Aba as saying the husband, Dolma Kyab, strangled his wife, following a fight about his alcohol addiction.
The official says the man burned her gasoline-drenched body a day later, adding he was “certain the case was not a protest against Chinese policy,” as earlier reported by several international news outlets and Tibetan exile groups.
Both the Britain-based Free Tibet and the U.S.-based International Campaign for Tibet quoted local sources as saying Kunchoek Wangmo set herself on fire on March 13, in the latest in an intensifying wave of politically motivated self-immolation protests.
Both organizations said the husband had been arrested, as the Global Times confirmed. But they said he was only arrested after refusing to blame his wife’s self-immolation on family problems.
Amid continuing tensions between the Chinese government and ethnic Tibetans, Radio Free Asia reports Chinese police have removed a prayer written on a cliff calling for the long life of the Dalai Lama:
The prayer, which covered a large area of the rock face and was placed above carved and painted mantras, was inscribed on March 10 by residents of Khangmar village in the Dzatoe township of Yulshul prefecture’s Tridu (in Chinese, Chenduo) county, Lobsang Sangye, a Tibetan living in India, told RFA’s Tibetan Service on Monday.
The prayer was put up to commemorate the 54th anniversary of Tibetan Uprising Day, a failed 1959 national rebellion against Chinese rule, Sangye said, citing information received from sources in the region, which has been marked by frequent anti-China protests.
“On learning about this, Chinese officials labeled the act a ‘political incident’ and sent security forces to erase the prayer,” Sangye said.
Details concerning when the Chinese action was taken, or on the possible detention of Tibetans held responsible for writing the prayer, were not immediately available.
