Patrick Brown: Tibet's epidemic of self-immolation

[DharmaDefender]

Fantastic and powerful analysis into the issue. Thereve been 100 self-immolations since 2009, and Beijing remains unmoved. Back in the Vietnam War days, it only took one self-immolation to move Pres. John Kennedy into action.

How many more need to be sacrificed senselessly, for the Tibetans to understand that their lives are meaningless to the Beijing government?

Look at how nothing has shifted or moved since 2009 - security is still as tight as ever and in fact, the Beijing government is making life more difficult and restricted for the Tibetans inside Tibet. So where is the result that the Tibetans are seeking from burning themselves? Has this method made life easier or more difficult for them? Yet, since 2009, if someone of remotely Chinese origin lends a softened approach to Tibetan, the Tibetans continue to rejoice in these small victories. How silly.

What I find EXTREMELY interesting is that the Tibetans who self-immolate do not make requests to the Beijing government, but appeal to the Tibetan government and to HH. Obviously their aware that appealing to the Beijing governments better nature would be futile, so they might as well try for the Tibetan government who are obviously more sympathetic. And clearly their ignorant that the Tibetan government has no influence in this game, and it is the Beijing government is the one who holds all the power.

And what I find interesting is the authors independent conclusion that His Holiness is not doing enough to stop these self-immolations. The author notes that the Dalai Lama has a lot of power to stop the self-immolations simply by forbidding it, and yet has not done so. This is the same conclusion that DorjeShugden.com has come up with - why has the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government remained relatively silent on the issue? Why does the CTA focus more on suppressing Dorje Shugden, rather than suppressing this wave of self-immolations?

From: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/02/13/f-vp-brown-tibet.html?cmp=rss

Patrick Brown: Tibet's epidemic of self-immolation
Warning: This piece contains a graphic description

In Canada, the recent hunger strike by Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence jolted the country into a national reflection about the issues for which she seemed willing, symbolically at least, to put her life on the line.

In China, a more dramatic and horrifying form of protest has become almost commonplace

At six o'clock on the morning of Feb. 3, Lobsang Namgyal, a 37-year-old Tibetan monk strode up to a police station in Zoege in the Tibetan area of Sichuan province, drenched himself with gasoline and set himself on fire.

It was the hundredth self-immolation since 2009 when this wave of suicides began in the aftermath of widespread protests the previous year. Security in the region is so tight that it took 10 days for news of this grim milestone to reach the outside world.

Eighty-two of the 100, including Lobsang Namgyal, have died. And on Wednesday, police in Nepal, outside China's jurisdiction, reported another Tibetan exile was in critical condition after setting himself alight at the foot of Kathmandu's Boudhanath Stupa, a revered Buddhist shrine.

Far from provoking a national reflection on what life under Chinese rule is like for Tibetans, this wave of self-immolations has met with a predictable reaction from Chinese authorities.

It consists of a propaganda campaign accusing the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of instigating the protest, as well as ever-tighter security measures, including harsh prison sentences for those accused of abetting the suicides, or trying to stop police from seizing the remains.

When the Chinese parliament meets in a few weeks, Tiananmen Square will be lined with fire extinguishers and police snatch teams.

The chance of another suicide by fire is, in itself, of no particular concern to China's rulers. But they are determined to prevent such an event in the political heart of the country from being captured by the world's media.


Eye-witness account
Publicly committing suicide in this most excruciating and extreme form of protest can have a powerful impact.

Fifty years ago in Vietnam, a Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc became the first person in modern times to burn himself to death for a cause.

He set himself on fire on June 11, 1963, to protest the harsh treatment of Buddhists by the regime of the Roman Catholic president Ngo Dinh Diem.

The New York Times' David Halberstam, the greatest of Vietnam War reporters, witnessed the event and filed this unforgettable report:

"Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly …

"I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think … As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him."


Martyrdom?
The images of the burning monk, coupled with the callous and distasteful reaction of the Diem regime, were so shocking to U.S. president John Kennedy that he authorized the removal of Ngo Din Diem a few months later.

Since then, politically motivated self-immolations have occurred in dozens of countries. Inspired by Thich Quang Duc's example, a student named Jan Palach set himself on fire in Prague's Wenceslas Square in 1969, a martyrdom that Czechs see as an important stepping stone towards the overthrow of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia 20 years later.

Two years ago, a Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi became the catalyst for revolution in Tunisia and beyond when he set himself on fire in protest against a life plagued by injustice, harassment and humiliation.

In each of these instances, the unexpected and dramatic death of a single individual — all the more powerful because the violence was directed inward and harmed no one else — had a significant impact on events.

But that is not always the case.

So far, Beijing has remained unmoved by one hundred such deaths in the Tibetan areas of its western provinces, and in Tibet itself, the supposedly autonomous region that China controls.

International awareness of the situation has been muted because many of the areas where the suicides are happening have been closed to foreign reporters for years.

In Tibet, decades of Chinese rule have created a bottomless well of resentment in which Tibetans feel that they lack the freedom to practice their religion, and that their language and culture are under threat.

Brutal paramilitary policing, environmental depredation, careless economic development and an influx of Han Chinese carpetbaggers have made matters worse.

That said, we know distressingly little about the precise motives that have led so many Tibetans to take this drastic and often final step of burning themselves to death. Only a few have left behind a clear statement.


A futile waste
Those few testaments that have been left express a yearning for the return of the exiled Dalai Lama. And they implore their fellow Tibetans to protect their language and religion, but make no specific demands of China.

General discontent is not sufficient to explain the epidemic of suicides.

Very few of the self-immolations have taken place in the Tibetan heartland, which China calls the Tibetan Autonomous region.

Almost all have been in the Tibetan areas of neighbouring provinces, which suggests that regional issues may be playing a role as well.

Many, including the most recent, have been associated with one particular monastery, Kirti, in Sichuan. It's likely that the phenomenon of emulative suicides, known as the Werther effect, named for the wave of suicides that followed the publication of Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, is also playing a role.

In terms of effectiveness, self-immolation is particularly vulnerable to the law of diminishing returns.

One martyr with a clear message provides a rallying point for the cause he or she died for. When a hundred people burn themselves to death, they become, sadly, statistics.

This protest has become a futile waste of young lives.

China's accusation that there is a campaign orchestrated by the Dalai Lama is quite unfounded. The Dalai Lama has said nothing to encourage the self-immolations.

At the same time, by saying nothing more than "what's happening is very sad; it brings tears to my eyes," he has not used his enormous authority to discourage them either. It may now be time for him to do so.

[vajratruth]

And that is indeed the biggest tragedy that the self immolations have become mere statistics and many die in vain. Instead of having the desired effects, the self immolations have caused an opposite and unwanted response from the Chinese which is to clamp down even harder on the Tibetans in the TAR, and at the same time provide an opportunity to portray the Dalai Lama as being sinister and behind these self immolations. The world can think of China how they like but whatever negative thoughts they have towards the Chinese is soon forgotten as China proves to be a nation that the world prefers not to cross...for now. Clearly it pays better to be China's friends these days and that is a fact.

That China is unmoved is a given. However that the Dalai Lama and CTA have done nothing significant to address this "epidemic" is something of concern namely because it is Tibetan lives that are being lost and moreover, a large percentage of those who have sacrificed their lives were monks which makes it particularly important for the Dalai Lama to address. The Dalai Lama reluctance to intervene adds fuel to the China-initiated allegations that indeed the Dalai Lama is behind these senseless acts. Not doing anything effective makes the Tibetan government look just as callous as the Chinese and if not, then totally incompetent. There is no upside for the CTA via these self immolations either.

In the final analysis, the CTA should not regard the self immolations from a perspective of how much political mileage they can gain from it, if any. They ought to address this epidemic from a moral and Buddhist perspective and against those standards of care expected of a government for its own people, the CTA has fallen well short of their duty.

China aside, the CTA has failed to unite the Tibetan people and provide some hope for their cause. The Tibetan parliament is stricken with corruption; an already demoralized community of refugees is divided further by their own government along not only religious lines via the Shugden ban but also by the total failure of the leadership to define a single Tibetan purpose; democracy is in decay as witnessed by the religious persecutions, the unlawful firing of RFA Director who refuse to toe the government line, and by the unjustifiable interfering by the CTA into Karma Kagyu matters. All these add to the Tibetan sense of haplessness and translates into a social disease that expresses itself as self immolations.

[WisdomBeing]

This is an excellent article on the self-immolation issue. The 100 deaths have not achieved anything, and that should not be a surprise to anyone. China will not listen to any country in the world - and with its hugely populous country, does anyone really think that the Chinese authorities will be emotionally blackmailed into action by 100 or even 1000 self-immolations? I doubt it. Also, there is no way that China would give in because it would destablise its entire country. Can you imagine what would happen if people started self-immolating in other parts of China to protest whatever people were not happy with? Remember Tiananmen Square in 1989. What did the world do? Nothing. What did China do? Remove the problem. Did China care about its international reputation. No. Will China care now? No.

The saddest thing about the self-immolations is that HH the Dalai Lama has not issued a decree to the Tibetans to stop this terrible actions. As Patrick Brown says, "It may now be time for him to do so." To me, it's not a matter of "may" but "is". Even now would be 99 lives too late. Let's not make it 101.. though i think that as long as the Dalai Lama and CTA remains quiet on this, 101, 102 etc is merely a matter of time.

[Ensapa]

The self immolations have been overdone, if you ask me. There is only a limited number of times where you can self immolate without much reason or effect. People go numb to it after a while and people can see through very easily through inference with the reactions of the sikyong and HHDL on the issue and they can deduce very easily that the CTA is behind the self immolations. It doesnt serve any purpose, and moreover it is a very bad example to Buddhists everywhere and it tells people that Buddhism encourages self immolations, especially when monks do it.