Tibet
Context: Biru’s Role in TAR Self-Immolation
Biru county, located in the east-central TAR, has had a relatively low profile in international news media reports on Tibetan protests over the past years, based on Commission staff monitoring of news media reports. The scale of security responses to recent events in Biru, however, likely reflects Chinese government and Communist Party sensitivity toward political protests in the county. Biru’s role in the series of Tibetan self-immolations focusing on political and religious issues provides significant context for the series of detentions and protests summarized below.
Congressional-Executive Commission on China | www.cecc.gov
Chairman Brown and Cochairman Smith Express Grave Concern Over Tibetan Self-Immolations
Concurrent with a nearly seven-fold increase in 2012 over 2011 in Tibetan self-immolations focused on political and religious issues—81 such immolations in 2012 compared to 12 in 2011—the Commission has observed reports of 2 Tibetans self-immolating in 2012 as property protests.
Based on a Gansu Daily report (in Chinese, 3 December 12; translated in Dui Hua Human Rights Journal, 5 December 12), the "Opinion on Handling Self-Immolation Cases in Tibetan Areas in Accordance With the Law" (the Opinion), describes Tibetan self-immolations in terms stressing "evil" criminality, not as protests resulting from grievances that the government could address constructively:
The following text was retrieved from the State Administration for Religious Affairs Web site on December 4, 2012.
Tibetan Buddhists who live in the Tibetan areas of China—where officials characterize the Dalai Lama as a "splittist"—likely will regard the Dalai Lama's September 24 statement (Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (OHHDL), 24 September 11), as of heightened importance due to the statement's formality and public release, the significance of the issues to the future of Tibetan Buddhism, and the strong wording of his remarks.
The State Council has issued an opinion on the development of pastoral areas that bolsters longstanding grazing bans and the resettlement of herders, policies that have drawn concern over the efficacy of their stated environmental aims and for their impact on herding communities, including several ethnic minority groups.