Chinese Court Sentences Tibetan Monk To 11 Years in Prison
Self-Immolated Monk
A Chinese court in Sichuan sentenced on Monday a young monk for “intentionally killing” the fellow monk who self-immolated in March. The court sentenced Drongdru, a Tibetan monk, to 11 years in prison, causing the United States to express concern on Wednesday over the legitimacy of the sentence, whether it was pronounced in consistency with the provisions of the Chinese Constitution and the international human rights standards. The U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland expressed hope that the Chinese would allow journalists and diplomats to report accurate information from Tibet.
On Tuesday, two more monks in the Kirti monastery were sentenced to longer terms in prison for “plotting, instigating and assisting” in the death of the self-immolated monk.
In March, Rigzin Phuntsog, a Tibetan monk from the Kirti monastery, set himself ablaze in a protest against the rule of China in Tibet. His gesture caused others to protest, and some 300 arrests were made at the monastery.
The monastery has been taken into custody by Chinese security forces on April 21, and no one knows what became of the monks there, since there is no news about them.
However, China has rejected American charge that they were confined within the monastery or forcefully “disappeared,” saying that the local authorities were investigating the circumstances of the accident.
More than that, China said that the Communist regime was “conducting legal education for the monks” in order to maintain the religious order in the monastery.
Another monk set himself ablaze on August 16, in Sichuan, in sign of protest for the Chinese rule in Tibet proper and the province of Sichuan, where there is a substantial Tibetan ethnic group.
Chinese Security Forces Arrest Buddhist Monk
The 29-year-old monk’s name was Tsewang Norbu, he was from Tawu monastery and before he died he shouted: “We Tibetans want freedom!” and “Long live Dalai Lama!” and “Dalai Lama to Return to Tibet!”
In March 2011, another monk set himself on fire, causing 300 of his fellows in the monastery to be arrested for a month.
In March 2008, the Tibetans in Lhasa, the capital of the province, protested and demanded the return of their spiritual leader Dalai Lama.
Self-immolation is a religious practice in some branches of Buddhism, being somewhat connected to the Indian practice of fast unto death in as much as it suggests a detachment from the earthly things and an embracement of the spiritual matters.
It is also an extreme form of political protest, being distinct from the suicide attacks by the fact that they do not wish to inflict pain or damage on the bystanders and beholders. Self-immolations have been used by Vietnamese Buddhist monks, who protested against Roman Catholic oppression, and by Tibetan monks, who used them in protest against Chinese rules.
As China is growing as a political and economic power, its problems related to the ethnic fabric of the nation become more and more visible.
The western part of the country is involved in autonomy and even separatist movements. Thus, in the province of Xijiang, the Uyghur, a majority of Muslim people who have a Turk ethnic background, demand the termination of Chinese policy of colonization of the region with Han Chinese people. The Uyghurs also demand that their cultural and religious freedom be preserved. Some of them even demand that the Chinese leave, and allow them to establish a state of their own.
In Tibet and Sichuan, the Tibetan population demands the return of their spiritual leader Dalai Lama, who was forced to go into exile in 1950s, when the Chinese occupied the province.
Dalai Lama is considered by China the most dangerous threat to its integrity, and the last visit of the spiritual leader to the White House, where he was received by Barack Obama, determined the Chinese Prime Minister to say that his country would crush all those who wanted to ask for independence and separatism. Dalai Lama never asked for independence, but he did demand that cultural and religious autonomy be granted to his people.
