The increasing unrest among Tibetan protestors in China’s Sichuan province saw three Tibetan livestock herders set themselves on fire in protest at Chinese government’s repression this week but few ordinary Chinese are hearing much about the events.
The China Digital Times reports that the weekend immolations came just two weeks after Chinese authorities opened fire on Tibetan protesters in Sichuan province.
It quoted the The New York Times saying: “If confirmed, the latest cases would bring the total self-immolations over the past year to 19, an unprecedented wave of self-inflicted violence among the tiny ethnic minority in China, according to scholars. They were also apparently the first by lay people, rather than current or former members of the clergy, suggesting that self-immolation may be gaining popularity as a form of dissent.
The incidents took place Friday in a remote village in Seda County, once a center of Buddhist teaching, but reports did not surface until the weekend because the government has cut Internet and telephone connections to the area, said Tsering Woeser, a Tibetan poet in Beijing.
She said that one of the three men had died and that the other two, believed to be about 30 and 60 years old, were severely injured.
The local party secretary for Seda County disputed the latest reports in a Global Times article published Monday:
“Everything is all right here, although we still have no Internet access,” said Wang, who said there had been rumors saying some Tibetans were going to set themselves on fire, but “it has not happened.”
Zhang Yang, from the publicity department of the Party committee of Sichuan Province, told the Global Times that he has not heard of any self-immolation incidents over this weekend.
Despite claims in official state media that recent unrest between Tibetans and local authorities in Sichuan is no cause for concern, Beijing has put officials on alert ahead of this month’s Tibetan New Year festival. From The Telegraph:
“Officials must put all their efforts into maintaining a stable, unified social situation in our region. They must have a clear head and fully recognise the extreme importance and urgency of the job of maintaining stability,” a Communist Party notice said in the state-run Tibet Daily newspaper.
“Government departments must unstintingly carry out all measures designed to maintain stability, ” the notice ordered.
The diktat did not detail what measures should be deployed to quell any further unrest.
But with the fifth anniversary of the large-scale March 2008 Tibet uprising also looming, the message to strike hard and stamp out any signs of mass revolt was clear.
Meanwhile, the elected leader of Tibet’s government in exile told the Financial Times on Monday that he is worried about a forceful crackdown by the Chinese government:
“The military build-up is increasing rapidly. We have seen pictures of hundreds of convoys filled with paramilitary forces with automatic machine guns moving towards various parts of Tibetan areas,” Lobsang Sangay, the prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile, told the Financial Times on Monday, referring to images sent by sources in the Tibetan region.
“We are really worried that with such a military security build-up and so many guns in the hands of Chinese police and military personnel, we fear the Chinese government is preparing for something very drastic and unforeseen and tragic.”
The Global Post reported last week the extent of the carnage and also highlighted the heavy censorship by the authorities.
Violence has reportedly rocked Tibetan areas of China again this week, with reports of Chinese police firing on Tibetan protesters in Sichuan and killing at least one.
Tibetan rights groups outside of China say Chinese froces turned their guns on unarmed protesters in a remote mountainous area. The protesters had refused to celebrate the Chinese New Year (Tibet celebrates the new year on another calendar, not the traditional Chinese Lunar New Year that opened this week).
China’s official Xinhua news agency acknowledged that one person had died in the violence. There the details diverged and Xinhua says rights groups are “distorting” the details of the violence.
The advocacy group Free Tibet says its sources allege as many as 30 people were injured.
And herein lies the crucial problem with reporting on Tibet and getting accruate information. Chinese journalists are constrained by censorship and state-owned media rules. Foreign correspondents require special permits to enter Tibet proper. In cases like this reported violence in a Tibetan area of Sichuan province, journalists are certain to be barred, detained and turned away from reporting on the scene.
So how does one verify the facts of what happened in what was certainly a violent outburst in Tibetan parts of Sichuan province?
Many rely on Tibetan groups based outside of China and what contacts they can collect from within the country. China then puts forth its own version of the story. But most often, the real truth of events remains clouded in shadows, without independent verification.
A few things are certain: Tibetans appear to be protesting Chinese rule more in recent months and China has locked down the region from outsiders. Several monks have set themselves on fire in protest and Chinese restrictions on the region appear to be growing.
But without open access to the area, it may be impossible to know what’s really happening there, perhaps not by accident on the part of China.