Dharamshala, 11th April: On Saturday, students from the ‘Students for a Free Tibet-France’ (SFT-France) group and five other Tibetan organizations protested outside the Chinese embassy in Paris against three self-immolations that occurred in their nation in March. Protesters held up images of three Tibetans who had self-immolated last month to protest the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) misdeeds, as well as chants condemning Chinese harassment of Tibetans.
According to Dhondup Tsawa, president of SFT-France, they had all gathered outside the Chinese Embassy to demand Tibet’s independence from the CCP.
Taphun, an 81-year-old Tibetan, self-immolated in Kirti, Ngaba County, on March 27 for the Tibetan cause. He self-immolated outside the public security bureau office, which was established in 2008 to monitor the monastery region, near the Kirti monastery compound.
The Kirti incident occurred three days before the most recent documented self-immolation, which occurred in front of a Chinese police station outside a Buddhist monastery in Kyegudo (in Chinese, Jiegu), in the Yushul (Yushu) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai. His whereabouts and other facts are unknown.
Tsewang Norbu, a popular musician, self-immolated in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa on February 25 this year. In Tibet’s Kyegudo region, another Tibetan man lit himself on fire in front of a police station.
However, with the intensification of the information blockade in Tibetan areas in recent years, getting news out of Tibet has become increasingly difficult. In Tibetan areas, high-tech controls on phone and internet communications prevent news of Tibetan protests and arrests from reaching the outside world, and spreading news of self-immolations outside China has resulted in prison sentences.
Picture Credit: ANI
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