Miami Herald Logo

China blasts Dalai Lama over Tibetan self-immolations | Miami Herald

×
  • E-edition
  • Home
    • Site Information
    • Contact Us
    • About Us
    • Herald Store
    • RSS Feeds
    • Special Sections
    • Advertise
    • Advertise with Us
    • Media Kit
    • Mobile
    • Mobile Apps & eReaders
    • Newsletters
    • Social
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Google+
    • Instagram
    • YouTube

    • Sections
    • News
    • South Florida
    • Miami-Dade
    • Broward
    • Florida Keys
    • Florida
    • Politics
    • Weird News
    • Weather
    • National & World
    • Colombia
    • National
    • World
    • Americas
    • Cuba
    • Guantánamo
    • Haiti
    • Venezuela
    • Local Issues
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Health Care
    • In Depth
    • Issues & Ideas
    • Traffic
    • Sections
    • Sports
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Pro & College
    • Miami Dolphins
    • Miami Heat
    • Miami Marlins
    • Florida Panthers
    • College Sports
    • University of Miami
    • Florida International
    • University of Florida
    • Florida State University
    • More Sports
    • High School Sports
    • Auto Racing
    • Fighting
    • Golf
    • Horse Racing
    • Outdoors
    • Soccer
    • Tennis
    • Youth Sports
    • Other Sports
    • Politics
    • Elections
    • The Florida Influencer Series
    • Sections
    • Business
    • Business Monday
    • Banking
    • International Business
    • National Business
    • Personal Finance
    • Real Estate News
    • Small Business
    • Technology
    • Tourism & Cruises
    • Workplace
    • Business Plan Challenge
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Cindy Krischer Goodman
    • The Starting Gate
    • Work/Life Balancing Act
    • Movers
    • Sections
    • Living
    • Advice
    • Fashion
    • Food & Drink
    • Health & Fitness
    • Home & Garden
    • Pets
    • Recipes
    • Travel
    • Wine
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Dave Barry
    • Ana Veciana-Suarez
    • Flashback Miami
    • More Living
    • LGBTQ South Florida
    • Palette Magazine
    • Indulge Magazine
    • South Florida Album
    • Broward Album
    • Sections
    • Entertainment
    • Books
    • Comics
    • Games & Puzzles
    • Horoscopes
    • Movies
    • Music & Nightlife
    • People
    • Performing Arts
    • Restaurants
    • TV
    • Visual Arts
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Jose Lambiet
    • Lesley Abravanel
    • More Entertainment
    • Events Calendar
    • Miami.com
    • Contests & Promotions
    • Sections
    • All Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Op-Ed
    • Editorial Cartoons
    • Jim Morin
    • Letters to the Editor
    • From Our Inbox
    • Speak Up
    • Submit a Letter
    • Meet the Editorial Board
    • Influencers Opinion
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Blog Directory
    • Columnist Directory
    • Andres Oppenheimer
    • Carl Hiaasen
    • Leonard Pitts Jr.
    • Fabiola Santiago
    • Obituaries
    • Obituaries in the News
    • Place an Obituary

    • Place an ad
    • All Classifieds
    • Announcements
    • Apartments
    • Auctions/Sales
    • Automotive
    • Commercial Real Estate
    • Employment
    • Garage Sales
    • Legals
    • Merchandise
    • Obituaries
    • Pets
    • Public Notices
    • Real Estate
    • Services
  • Public Notices
  • Cars
  • Jobs
  • Moonlighting
  • Real Estate
  • Mobile & Apps

  • el Nuevo Herald
  • Miami.com
  • Indulge

Latest News

China blasts Dalai Lama over Tibetan self-immolations

Tom Lasseter

    ORDER REPRINT →

March 07, 2012 07:03 AM

BEIJING — Chinese officials lashed out Wednesday against Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, accusing him and his allies of orchestrating a string of self-immolations in ethnic Tibetan areas that have gained international attention and renewed criticism of China’s authoritarian regime.

“The Dalai Lama clique and overseas separatist forces are leading Tibetan Buddhism onto the track of extremism,” said Wu Zegang, an ethnic Tibetan and the government head of the Aba prefecture in the southwestern province of Sichuan, where most of the fiery protests have taken place.

Tibetan rights groups estimate that at least 25 people, most of them former or current Buddhist clergy, have set themselves on fire in the past year, an unprecedented act in modern Tibetan history. Of those 25,18 have died, according to rights groups.

Three additional self-immolations have been reported since Saturday alone, including one by a mother in her early 30s said to have shouted “Return his holiness” _ the Dalai Lama _“to Tibet” and “We need freedom.”

Sign Up and Save

Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

#ReadLocal

Speaking at a panel of local officials during the annual meeting of China’s National People’s Congress, a mostly rubber-stamp body, Wu and others described the self-immolations as a coordinated plot.

“Photos revealing the daily lives of most of the self-immolaters had been sent in advance to separatist forces abroad,” Wu said at an event open to the press, according to a translation by the state Xinhua news service. “These photos, contrasted by pictures depicting the self-immolation sites, were immediately dispersed by separatist forces to play up the situation.”

That description was at odds with past incidents, however, when rights group websites frequently have had only partial biographical details of those who'd set themselves on fire. The groups also have lagged before posting photographs of those who’ve self-immolated _ usually just grainy headshots _ and at times upload none at all.

Wu also charged that “to encourage self-immolations, they even offer a price of compensation for the dead. All these prove that self-immolations are premeditated political moves.”

Chinese authorities go to great lengths to prevent foreign journalists from entering ethnic Tibetan areas in Sichuan to check such claims, detaining reporters at roadblocks and questioning them before escorting their vehicles out of the area. The province abuts Tibet, which the Chinese government officially administers as an autonomous region but controls by a strict security regime.

The remarks by China’s officials conflicted with interviews conducted by McClatchy and others who’ve slipped into villages near the town of Aba, where the majority of self-immolations have occurred, and across Sichuan province.

Local ethnic Tibetans have said the self-immolations are a reaction to a repressive Chinese government that curbs their culture, language and religion. That, combined with desperation over the seeming impossibility of the Dalai Lama ever returning to Tibet, which he fled in 1959, has led to a deep sense of hopelessness, they say.

Nonetheless, the Communist Party secretary of Sichuan, Liu Qibao, said at the meeting that “public complaints about cultural repression do not exist. On the contrary, Tibetan culture is flourishing.”

At the beginning of the month, a senior Chinese leader had made plain that the government will brook no dissent on the issue.

Jia Qinglin, a member of the nation’s ruling politburo standing committee, said that authorities should “resolutely crush the Dalai Lama clique's conspiracy of making Tibetan-inhabited areas unstable, thus making the masses able to live and work there comfortably.”

During another panel Wednesday, in which delegates to the People’s Congress read reports and then took questions from journalists, the governor of the Tibet Autonomous Region was asked by a reporter about his reaction to online calls for the Dalai Lama himself to self-immolate.

“No matter who self-immolates, I think it’s an inhumane and immoral act," said Padma Choling, also an ethnic Tibetan. He added of the Dalai Lama that “if he is willing to self-immolate, that’s his business and has nothing to do with me.”

MORE FROM MCCLATCHY

Rare visit to remote Chinese region shows depth of Tibetan despair

China Rises blog: China, Tibetans and that which is not known

Tibetans' self-immolations lead China to crack down harder

Related stories from Miami Herald

latest-news

Wen's address to China's National People's Congress offers few surprises

March 05, 2012 07:23 AM

latest-news

Rare visit to remote Chinese region shows depth of Tibetan despair

February 14, 2012 03:12 PM

latest-news

China denies latest Tibetan self-immolations happened in Sichuan province

February 06, 2012 08:20 AM

  Comments  

Videos

Spelling Bee Winner

Congress members tour Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Migrant Children

View More Video

Trending Stories

Haitian police arrest five Americans who claimed they were on a ‘government mission’

February 18, 2019 06:37 PM

Man arrested after climbing crane near FIU to ask Trump for mercy for Cuban exile bomber

February 18, 2019 08:44 AM

A Florida 6th-grader called the Pledge of Allegiance ‘racist.’ Then he got arrested.

February 18, 2019 08:59 AM

Double vision: Miami will host Miami in future football game

February 18, 2019 06:36 PM

Here’s why the Dolphins will avoid dummies more than ever. And coaches weigh in on new QB

February 18, 2019 02:07 PM

Read Next

Rating Reggie McKenzie’s Oakland drafts a preview of what he can bring to Miami Dolphins

Armando Salguero

Rating Reggie McKenzie’s Oakland drafts a preview of what he can bring to Miami Dolphins

By Armando Salguero

    ORDER REPRINT →

February 19, 2019 12:59 AM

The Miami Dolphins have added experienced personnel man Reggie McKenzie to the front office as a senior executive to help identify and add talent in the coming draft. But McKenzie’s record as the Oakland Raiders general manager was inconsistent.

KEEP READING

Sign Up and Save

#ReadLocal

Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

MORE LATEST NEWS

Whole Foods and delivery service chicken salad products recalled after listeria found

Food & Drink

Whole Foods and delivery service chicken salad products recalled after listeria found

February 19, 2019 10:32 PM
He impregnated a mentally disabled woman, cops say. He had a one-way ticket to Haiti

Crime

He impregnated a mentally disabled woman, cops say. He had a one-way ticket to Haiti

February 19, 2019 10:46 PM
‘It has a prison-like feel’: Lawmakers tour Homestead shelter in hopes of shutting it

Immigration

‘It has a prison-like feel’: Lawmakers tour Homestead shelter in hopes of shutting it

February 19, 2019 09:29 PM
Teen murdered while playing cards in park, cops say. Search is on for the killer

Crime

Teen murdered while playing cards in park, cops say. Search is on for the killer

February 19, 2019 10:39 PM
Panthers scratch out a win against Sabres

Florida Panthers

Panthers scratch out a win against Sabres

February 19, 2019 10:22 PM
Police dismiss tip Smollett, 2 brothers together in elevator

Latest News

Police dismiss tip Smollett, 2 brothers together in elevator

February 19, 2019 10:22 PM
Take Us With You

Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand.

Icon for mobile apps

Miami Herald App

View Newsletters

Subscriptions
  • Start a Subscription
  • Customer Service
  • eEdition
  • Vacation Hold
  • Pay Your Bill
  • Rewards
Learn More
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletters
  • News in Education
  • Public Insight Network
  • Reader Panel
Advertising
  • Place a Classified
  • Media Kit
  • Commercial Printing
  • Public Notices
Copyright
Commenting Policy
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service


Back to Story