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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMore Monks Die by Fire in Protest of Beijing
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Published: January 9, 2012
BEIJING Three Tibetan monks in central China set themselves on fire this weekend, raising to 15 the number of suicides in the last year by Buddhist clergy members protesting aspects of Beijings rule in Tibet.
The deaths suggest that self-immolation is gaining favor as a form of political protest for Tibetan clergy. And they underscore the challenges the Chinese authorities face in controlling more than five million ethnic Tibetans living in what China calls the Tibet autonomous region and adjacent Sichuan and Qinghai Provinces.
Chinas central government has cracked down hard on religious activism in Tibet since ethnic riots in 2008 killed 19 people, many of them Han Chinese migrants, severely embarrassing rulers in the months leading to the Summer Olympics in Beijing. Human-rights activists say that hundreds of Tibetans were arrested afterward, and that some of them died in custody.
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While the Dalai Lama has deplored the suicides, he has also commended the victims. There is courage, very strong courage, he told the BBC in November. But he asked, How much effect?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/world/asia/3-monks-deaths-show-rise-of-self-immolation-among-tibetans.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
How much effect?
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Sid
Liquorice
(2,066 posts)answer to any problem. Sorry, but it just seems fanatical and irrational, no matter the circumstance.
ellisonz
(27,711 posts)...when you believe have nothing left to lose many have engaged in such a practice. They are harming no body but themselves in a physical sense. What the PRC has done and continues to do to Tibet is the worst part of human conscience; inexplicable immoral intolerance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Bouazizi
bowens43
(16,064 posts)This does nothing to help resolve the issues.
but then on the other hand, Mohamed Bouazizi ignited lot more than just his body, the Tunisian revolution and what followed from that, but also the Werther effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide