HONG KONG — It’s a terrible thing to watch a person burn to death. The flames swirl upward, like brightly waving pennants. The skin seems to melt, lips fuse together, eyes vaporize, arms adhere to chests. A dark gray char takes over, and in death the bodies go rigid, as if frozen.
“Human beings burn surprisingly quickly,’’ wrote the late Times reporter David Halberstam, who saw the self-immolation in June 1963 of Thích Quảng Đức, a Buddhist monk in Vietnam.
“I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think,’’ David wrote. “As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.’’
The latest suicide-by-fire of a Buddhist monk was confirmed Wednesday — Tibetan New Year’s Day — by the Tibetan government in exile. This time it was an 18-year-old monk named Nangdrol, who set himself alight in the town of Ngaba, also known as Aba, in Sichuan Province.
Beijing has deployed army, paramilitary and undercover officers in Tibetan areas in recent weeks, in advance of the New Year holiday. Despite the region’s having been almost hermetically sealed by the Chinese authorities, reports have trickled out, some saying Tibetan towns now resemble armed camps.
Access to the important pilgrimage site of the Potala Palace, for example, has reportedly been limited by checkpoints. Hundreds of monks once lived at the palace, in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. Now, one new account says, just 36 monks are in residence.
“Soldiers and other military personnel now live in the rooms where the monks used to reside,’’ said the report, which could not be verified. “Although it is listed as a World Heritage site, the Chinese government now uses the Potala as a military post.’’
But other anecdotal accounts (like the tweet below) suggest things are normal at the New Year, for example at the important monastery town of Lhagang, also called Tagong, located in Sichuan.
The number of Buddhist monks and nuns who have self-immolated in protest of China’s harsh policies in Tibet and Tibetan areas now stands at just a few, or about a dozen, or as many as two dozen. It depends on who’s counting.
A leading exile group, the International Campaign for Tibet, has a timeline, a map and profiles of 22 confirmed suicides over the past three years. (The listing does not include the latest death.)
Tibetan groups abroad say at least six Tibetans have self-immolated this year in Sichuan Province alone. But the Communist Party newspaper Global Times reports that “officials with Sichuan’s publicity department said no self-immolation cases took place this year.’’
The paper accuses “Western media reports” of inflating the numbers and the seriousness of the immolations.
Somebody is getting it very wrong. To wit, from Global Times:
“The country’s Tibetan-populated regions are in a party mood as the Tibetan New Year, or Losar, falls today, striking a stark contrast with the call by the ‘Tibetan government in exile’ to cancel celebrations.”
There’s clearly a climate of fear and anger in Tibet and the Tibetan areas of western China. Louisa Lim of NPR recently spoke to Tibetan monks who, although reluctant to speak to an outsider, applauded the suicides of their brethren.
“What they did was great,’’ said one monk.
Chinese officials blame the Dalai Lama, as usual, accusing him of recruiting impressionable monks and nuns to commit suicide. A Global Times editorial, headlined “Dalai uses suicides for political gain,” said: “It is cruel to put political pressure on young Tibetan monks. They are unable to distinguish good from evil in international politics and cannot imagine they have been used. The Dalai group should stop sacrificing these young monks.’’
The self-immolations have underscored a growing rift in the Tibetan exile community. The government in exile, based in India, supports the Dalai Lama’s so-called Middle Way – the strategy of seeking accommodation with Beijing through dialogue and the pursuit of autonomy for Tibet rather than outright independence.
But young and politically active Tibetans want a more aggressive approach, more confrontational, even more violent. They see the dead Tibetans as freedom fighters.
“It would be very surprising if Tibetans who set themselves on fire, especially nuns and monks trained in the field of causality, were not conscious of the fact that their actions can have tremendous consequences and can capture the discontent and frustration of their compatriots,’’ said Christophe Besuchet, writing on the Web site of a vocal exile group, the Rangzen Alliance.
“They definitely realize,” he said, “the immense potential of unrest triggered by their actions.’’
Lobsang Sangay, the prime minister of the government in exile, said in an interview Wednesday on Australian TV that Chinese repression is driving the clergy to suicide.
“Tibetans cannot protest, they cannot peacefully gather — if you do, you might get shot at, and you can’t have hunger strikes, you can’t have rallies,’’ Mr. Sangay said. “Tibetans see this as the only or most drastic way of protesting against the repressive policies.’’
And how could suicide by fire not draw attention to the Tibetans’ complaints, if only because burning must surely be the most painful way to die?
I saw two young Iraqi civilians burn to death in the early days of the war. Their Toyota pickup truck, with several propane tanks in the back, was hit by a rocket. The tanks exploded, engulfing the men in flames. I vomited as I watched them burn, but I couldn’t look away. The color of their skin. The contortions of their legs. They didn’t utter a sound as they died. Even now, nine years later, I think about that every day.
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