Hold Fast

This is a good read on the Chinese government’s efforts to crack down on online rumors, particularly those occurring on microblogging platforms. Patrick Meier’s entire piece is worth reading, but the closing captures the challenge the Chinese Communist Party faces in an age of instant communication. So if Chinese authorities and state media aren’t even [...]

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The New York Times has a translated letter from Jamphel Yeshi to the Tibetan people, penned to explain why he was self-immolating. He self-immolated in Delhi while Chinese President Hu Jintao was visiting India. He died from his burns today. Here is his letter: Long Live His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who is the shining [...]

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Tenzin Dorjee, Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet (on whose Board of Directors I serve), released this statement last night following the self-immolation of Jampa Yeshi, a 27 year-old Tibetan refugee in India. Today’s act of self-immolation by Jamphel Yeshi, a young Tibetan in Delhi, highlights the extreme urgency of the situation inside [...]

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Woeser, probably the most famous Tibetan dissident poet and author, has an article in Foreign Policy on Tibet’s epidemic of self-immolations and the startling silence from the Han Chinese about what is happening in their colony. The piece is an important indictment of the Chinese public’s complicity in what their government is doing in Tibet. [...]

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Tom Lasseter of McClatchy: “China in our eyes is not fair or peaceful,” said the monk, a man in his early 40s who, like every ethnic Tibetan interviewed for this story, did so on the condition that he not be named and that certain details be withheld, for fear of getting dragged off by police. [...]

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Renowned exiled Tibetan author and poet Jamyang Norbu has one of the most thoughtful analysis of 2011′s epidemic of self-immolations by young Tibetan monks and nuns inside of Tibet – you can read it on his blog Shadow Tibet. His analysis looks at historic instances of self-immolation as a political act by practitioners of Buddhism [...]

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Paul Kane must have been wearing a pair of bad idea jeans when he penned his op-ed in the New York Times calling for the US to trade Taiwan to China for $1.14 trillion in debt forgiveness by the Chinese government. Kane thinks that the US’s commitment to defend Taiwan in the event of an [...]

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Time Magazine’s Hannah Beech has a first hand account from inside Tibet of the epidemic of self-immolations and other bold acts by Tibetans calling for freedom and a return of the Dalai Lama. It’s rare to get this sort of reporting from Tibet and the piece is illuminating for both the recent phenomenon of Tibetan’s [...]

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Nana Rolland has a piece in the Wall Street Journal which does a good job of contextualizing the political hopelessness Tibetans inside of Tibet are feeling, as evidenced by the nine self-immolations committed by young Tibetans since this spring. Self-immolations can be seen as the tragic and desperate acts of people who do not know [...]

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