China Seals Off West Sichaun After Monk Sets Himself Ablaze

Tsewang Norbu

A Tibetan monk burnt himself to death on Monday in southwest China as a protest against the way the Chinese authorities are treating the Tibetan leader in exile Dalai Lama. Before he set himself ablaze, the monk called for the return of the spiritual leader of Tibetans in the region.

The 29-year-old monk Tsewang Norbu was from the monastery of Tawu, in Sichuan, a province with a large Tibetan population that neighbors the province of Tibet. Norbu is said to have drank petrol, to have sprayed it on his clothes, and then to have set himself in fire.

Before he died, he is reported to have shouted: “We Tibetan people want freedom!” “Long live Dalai Lama!” and “Let Dalai Lama return to Tibet!”

Chinese state agency Xinhua also reported the self-immolation but said it was not clear yet why did it happen.

Chinese authorities reacted swiftly after the tragedy, and sealed off the area, by cutting phone and internet access in Sichuan. According to India-based exile groups, military tried to intervene and prevent the monks from taking the body of the monk to the monastery for proper burial rituals.

A French news agency was contacted by a monk by phone on Tuesday, and the monk said that over 1,000 police were surrounding the sanctuary, and that there were 100 monks inside with no possibility to access to food or water.

The death of Tsewang Norbu occurs a few months after another monk set him self on fire 150 kilometers of the place Norbu did.

Chinese call Tawu Daofu, and is a part of western Sichuan province where most of the population is of Tibetan descent. The Tibetan here demand self-rule and say that they should be part of a larger homeland under Tibetan rule.

Setting Himself Ablaze

China has been facing increased ethnic tension, especially in its western part, where, besides the Tibetans that live in Tibet and west Sichuan, there are also the Uyghurs that live in Xijiang province, or East Turkestan, as they call it.

Last month, Chinese police had to contain an Uyghur violent attack on a restaurant frequented by Han population, where a bomb went off and seven people were attacked with knives.

Chinese police intervened and contained the problem, at the end of a brutal crackdown and arrests. The Uyghurs demand that the central government put a stop to the colonization of their province with Han Chinese, and that their religious and cultural heritage be respected. Most of them are Muslim.

The same situation happened in neighboring Tibet, conquered by China in 1959, when the rightful leader of the province, Dalai Lama, had to go into exile, after a brutal intervention against his people.

Dalai Lama has been living in India, and London ever since, advocating peace and understanding in the world and demanding freedom and autonomy for his people. Mainly, the Tibetans demand the same thing as Uyghurs: that the cultural and religious heritage be respected, and that the colonization with Chinese Han people stop.

In March 2008, Tibetans protested in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, demanding the return of Dalai Lama.

Led by the monks in the monasteries in the capital, the people torched shops and attacked the Han Chinese residents, whom they seen as a threat to cultural heritage and ethnic being.

The protest was suppressed by the Chinese police but not before it had a chance to spread all the way to the western communities in the Sichuan province.

In March 2011 another monk set himself on fire. Reports say that 300 monks from a monastery in western China were detained for a month after that.

China considers the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama as a threat to national security, accusing him of being a separatist and of instigating to violence. The Nobel Peace Award winner denies such accusations, and argues that he only wants a transition to an autonomous Tibet. He never said he was asking for the independence of Tibet.

A scandal broke out between China and Tibet last week as president Barack Obama received Dalai Lama in Washington. On that occasion, the prime minister of China, who was celebrating the “liberation of Tibet,” said China would crush anyone who wanted Tibet to be independent from it, alluding directly to the spiritual leader of the Tibetans.