[With the accumulated
toll of self-immolations approaching 100, Beijing has been scrambling to find
effective deterrents to such acts, which began in 2009 as a desperate attempt
to publicize what many Tibetans consider heavy-handed Chinese policies. In the
early months of the crisis, officials sought to demonize self-immolators as
terrorists or mentally deranged people. The authorities also locked down the
most restive towns and monasteries, preventing monks from leaving or foreign
journalists from entering.]
BEIJING —
The authorities in northwest China have
detained seven people they say organized the fatal self-immolation of a Tibetan
villager in October, photographed his burning body and then sent the images
abroad.
The arrests, announced
Tuesday by Xinhua, the official news agency, suggest that the Chinese
government is increasing the use of its newest strategy against the politically
motivated suicides in Tibetan areas of China: punishing friends and relatives
of those who self-immolate.
The Xinhua report said a
Tibetan advocacy group in India convinced the villager, Sangye Gyatso, a
27-year-old father of two, that self-immolation was a “heroic deed” and that it
would improve his family’s standing.
A spokesman for the
group, the Tibetan Youth Congress, called the assertions “ridiculous.”
With the accumulated
toll of self-immolations approaching 100, Beijing has been scrambling to find
effective deterrents to such acts, which began in 2009 as a desperate attempt
to publicize what many Tibetans consider heavy-handed Chinese policies. In the
early months of the crisis, officials sought to demonize self-immolators as
terrorists or mentally deranged people. The authorities also locked down the
most restive towns and monasteries, preventing monks from leaving or foreign
journalists from entering.
Such measures appear to
have done little to quell the protests, prompting officials to try new tactics.
In Tongren County, in Qinghai Province, the authorities recently issued new
regulations that permanently revoke public benefits for the families of
self-immolators and cancel government-financed projects in their hometowns. If
monks or nuns visit the home of a self-immolator, their monasteries are to be
shut down as punishment.
In recent weeks, more
than a dozen people across the region have been charged with inciting
self-immolations or accused of spreading information about them via text
message or e-mail. Last month, eight people were detained on accusations of
trying to publicize a self-immolation in Luchu County in Gansu Province.
In October, four
Tibetans in Sichuan Province were given sentences of from 7 to 11 years; two
were convicted of encouraging their friend to self-immolate, and the other two
for leaking news of it to “outside contacts.”
In the most recent case
in Gansu Province, Xinhua said one of the seven detained men, a Buddhist monk
named Khyi Gyatso, had joined the Tibetan Youth Congress in Dharamsala, India,
after escaping in 2000. But the monk, Xinhua said, stayed in touch with his
boyhood friend Sangye Gyatso and persuaded him to “contribute to the cause of
Tibetans” by setting himself on fire.
Xinhua said Sangye
Gyatso — whom it described as a convicted thiefand a chronic womanizer — fell
under the monk’s sway. He later told three friends about the time and place of
his self-immolation so they could take photographs and share them with overseas
groups, including representatives of the Dalai Lama.
Tenzin Norsang, joint
secretary of Tibetan of Youth Congress in Dharamsala, said the group had no
connection to Sangye Gyatso’s death.
“Those who are
self-immolating have been living under Chinese rule for more than 50 years —
they don’t need anyone to tell them what to do,” he said.
[At a news
conference after the meeting, the senators declined to characterize Mr. Morsi’s
response. But they appeared to feel he had addressed the issue. The senators
emphasized their support for Egypt’s transition to democracy. They also
said they would press Congress to provide badly needed financial aid and urge
American businesses to invest in Egypt, although they also said that Mr.
Morsi’s inflammatory statements in 2010 made both requests tougher to sell.]
By David D. Kirkpatrick
 |
| Egypt Leader’s Anti-Semitic Remarks |
It was Mr. Morsi’s first public response to news reports
that as a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood he had made anti-Semitic statements
about Jews and Zionists. A recently resurfaced video of a speech that Mr. Morsi
gave at a rally in his hometown in the Nile Delta nearly three years ago shows
him urging his listeners “to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred
for them: for Zionists, for Jews.” In another video of a television interview
he gave the same year, Mr. Morsi criticized Zionists in recognizably
anti-Semitic terms, as “these bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers,
the descendants of apes and pigs.”
Both sets of comments were reported
this week in The New
York Times. Representatives of the White House and the State Department
condemned them. And on Wednesday Mr. Morsi was confronted about the remarks by
a visiting delegation of six American senators led by John McCain, Republican
of Arizona, and Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island.
Yasser Ali, the Morsi spokesman, said on Wednesday night at
a news conference that Mr. Morsi had told the delegation that the comments were
meant as criticism of the “racist” policies of the Israeli government, not as
insults to Jews.
“President Morsi assured the delegation that the broadcast
comments were taken out of an address against the Israeli aggression against
Gaza,” Mr. Ali said, according to The Associated Press. The spokesman said Mr.
Morsi also assured senators of his respect for monotheistic religions as well
as for “freedom of belief and practicing religions,” The A.P. said.
At a news conference after the meeting, the senators
declined to characterize Mr. Morsi’s response. But they appeared to feel he had
addressed the issue. The senators emphasized their support for Egypt’s transition to democracy. They also
said they would press Congress to provide badly needed financial aid and urge
American businesses to invest in Egypt, although they also said that Mr.
Morsi’s inflammatory statements in 2010 made both requests tougher to sell.
“The Egyptian people are going to have to showcase your
best behavior,” said another senator in the delegation, Lindsey Graham,
Republican of South Carolina.