East Asia China Tibetans apprehensive of a fresh crackdown If you can not hold demonstrations or go on hunger strikes or even write petitions, what do you do? You set yourself on fire, in extreme desperation. Tibet has been sealed off. Thousands of additional security forces have been deployed, foreign tourists ordered to leave and the region closed to outsiders. With nearly 25 self- immola tio ns dur ing the las t twe lve mont hs, Chi na is app re hens ive that the Mar ch 10 anniversary of the 1959 uprising may bring Tibetans into the streets once again. Tibetan areas of western Chinahave been witnessing spiraling unrest in recent months in the wake of self-immolations which have been taking place at regular intervals. Most recentl y, an eightee n year old girl in a nunnery near the outskir ts of Aba, Tenzin Choedon, called out slogans against the government as the flames engulfed her body and took herlife. The town of Aba in the Sichuan prefecture on the Tibetan Plateau almost resembles a mil itary camp. It is swa rmi ng wit h par a-military police for ces carr ying shotguns and assa ult rif les . The re are pol ice road blocks and pat rol s eve rywhere . The town gai ned international attention last March as an epicenter of Tibetan turmoil when a monk from the Ki rti mona st er y se t himse lf on fire. He wa s re por tedly commemor at ing the thir d anniversary of 2008 demonstrations and riots across the Tibetan Plateau including Aba, which had ended in blood-shed. After that self-immolation last March, some 300 other monks were hauled up from Kirti in tr uck s, sp ar kin g concern even in the United Nations. “Chinese security personnel ar e crac ki ng down on Ti be ta ns on one pretext or another and the world will not know whether they were arrested, whetherthey were tort ur ed, whet he r they were killed,” says Lobsang Sangay, the head ofTibet’s government-in-exile. Indeed, Tibetans, particularly in the Sichuan pre fe cture, li ve in dr ea d of the so ldie rs. They chafe at the government’s restrictions on fr ee ex pr es si on of their cult ur e and re li gi ou s pr ac ti ce s an d th ey spe ak in A Posters Exhibition abroad for Free Tibet in memory of nearly 25 monks who have immolated themselves during last 12 months.
