2015年11月3日星期二

Tibet on Fire: Self-Immolations Against Chinese Rule


Press Release


Tibet on Fire

Self-Immolations Against Chinese Rule


By TSERING WOESER
Translated by Kevin Carrico

Why Tibetan monks are setting themselves on fire

Publication: January 12, 2016
Paperback, 240 pages

ISBN: 9781784781538
$16.95



Tibet on Fire is available for excerpt.
For review copies and press inquiries: sophia@versobooks.com
Praise for Tibet on Fire
Powerful and deeply humane...a must-read for anyone eager to learn about the Tibetan people and their struggles.
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, author of China in the 21st Century, in praise of Voices of Tibet

An eloquent and unfiltered glimpse into how the ruling Communist Party has transformed the Tibetan plateau through decades of heavy-handed policies.”
Andrew Jacobs, Beijing correspondent for The New York Times, in praise of Voices of Tibet

Since the 2008 uprising, nearly 150 Tibetan monks have set fire to themselves in protest at the Chinese occupation of their country. Most have died from their injuries. Author Tsering Woeser is a prominent voice of the Tibetan movement, and one of the few Tibetan authors to write in Chinese. Her stirring acts of resistance have led to her house arrest, where she remains under close surveillance to this day. Tibet On Fire is her account of the oppression Tibetans face and the ideals driving those who resist, both the self-immolators and other Tibetans like herself. With a cover image designed by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, Tibet on Fire is angry and cogent: a clarion call for the world to take action.

TSERING WOESER is a poet, essayist and blogger, and one of the Tibetan movement’s most prominent voices. In 2011 she was awarded the Prince Claus Prize and the International Women of Courage Award by the US Department of State. She lives under close surveillance in Beijing.
The Day That Self-Immolation Came to Tibet
February 27, 2009, was the third day of Losar, the Tibetan New Year. It was also the day that self-immolation came to Tibet. The authorities had just cancelled a Great Prayer
                    
Festival (Monlam) to commemorate the victims of the government crackdown in 2008. A monk by the name of Tapey stepped out of the Kirti Monastery and set his body alight on the streets of Ngawa, in the region known in Tibetan as Amdo, a place of great religious reverence and relevance, now designated as part of China’s Sichuan Province. Losar is usually a celebratory festival, but it was marked by the majority of Tibetans in 2009 in silent mourning—a mourning that continues to this day. On account of the unrelenting government suppression that followed in the wake of protests across Tibet the year before, a slogan has spread secretly among the people of Tibet: “No Losar.” Tibetans had decided not to celebrate Losar, as a means of resisting Chinese rule. And continuing this resistance, Tapey’s final act would become the beginning of a series of self-immolations that have spread across Tibet and beyond in recent years.
                    
What happened in 2008? On March 14, just a few months before the Olympic Games in Beijing, riots broke out in Lhasa in response to the violent suppression by Chinese security forces of monks’ peaceful protests four days earlier.1 The protests quickly spread throughout Tibet. Two days later, on March 16, authorities forced Kirti Monastery to fly the Chinese national flag above its main prayer hall, sparking a protest and demonstration by several thousand monks and ordinary people. The Kirti Monastery is one of the more than twenty monasteries of the Gelugpa sect of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and one of the most important inside Tibetan lands. The military police responded violently, killing more than twenty people, including a pregnant woman, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, and a five-year-old child. This bloody day has come to be known as the “Ngawa Massacre.”
                    
Nearly a year later, this violence was unleashed again against the victims, as the authorities blocked an annual commemorative prayer festival in their honor. Before his final act, Tapey left a note declaring that this decision left him with no choice but to set his body alight in protest.  First encountering the news of Tapey’s self-immolation online that evening in 2009, I was shocked—initially, by the sheer resoluteness of his act. But reading more closely, I was even more shocked by one particular detail of the events that day: the military police had opened fire on Tapey as he was burning. According to eyewitnesses, Tapey fell to the ground after a round of gunfire and was whisked away from the scene in a military vehicle. Images uploaded to the Internet  clearly show Tapey lying on the ground surrounded by sixteen uniformed and plainclothes police officers, at least three of whom are armed with guns, while another nearby menacingly brandishes a baton.
                    
Monks from Tapey’s monastery report that gunshot wounds to his right arm and legs left him crippled. The Chinese state, however, denies that any shots were ever fired. China Central Television (CCTV), the Party’s mouthpiece, has even broadcast images of Tapey receiving generous medical care in a hospital. But behind these images of benevolent care, the truth remains that, five years after his daring act of protest, Tapey has yet to return to his monastery, or even his hometown. No one knows what has become of him or where exactly he is. Amid all of this uncertainty, one ominous fact that we can confirm is that a fellow monk by the name of Sangko has been sentenced to six years in prison for photographing and sharing images of Tapey’s self-immolation online.

没有评论:

发表评论