Tibeta Self Immolation

THE ULTIMATE PROTEST: Women Self-Immolate in Tibet
Author(s): Gloria S. Riviera

Source: World Affairs, Vol. 175, No. 3 (SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012), pp. 69-74
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
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THE ULTIMATE PROTEST
Women Self-Immolate in Tibet
Gloria S. Riviera
T his spring marked the fifty-third anniversary of the Tibetan uprising

against Chinese rule after Beijing took control of Lhasa in 1959 and the
Dalai Lama fled to India soon after. One of the untold stories of this peri-
od is the role of Tibetan women in five decades of resistance. On March
12, 1959, thousands of Tibetan women organized a nonviolent protest in

front of the Dalai Lama's home against what the Tibetan Women's Associ-
ation describes as "the illegal and forcible occupation of their country by
the People's Republic of China." Since then, the TWA has marked every
March 12th as "Women's Uprising Day" to remember the many who had
been imprisoned, tortured, or executed after that protest, including a
woman by the name of Pamo Kusang, who had been married to a low-level
Tibetan official at the time of her martyrdom.
I had not heard Pamo Kusang's name before moving to China this year.
But according to the Tibet Justice Center, Kusang and others "remained
defiant" while they were "brutally tortured and mercilessly interrogated"
for years after the event. In 1970, during the high point of the Cultural
Revolution, Pamo Kusang organized a protest from behind prison walls.
A group of women marched together on prison grounds and chanted
anti-Chinese slogans. Kusang was seized by guards and transferred to a
notoriously violent prison. Under interrogation there, she repeatedly
Gloria S. Riviera is a correspondent for ABC News.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 69
refused to name names, insisting that she alone was respo

nizing every protest in which she participated. For her de
among a group of women sentenced to public execution
literature distributed by the Justice Center:
The crowd could hardly recognize them for they had suffer
imagination from many years of imprisonment. Pamo Ku
self was crippled and had lost her hearing in one ear as
hair which had probably been pulled out by the roots. T
lined up in front of a pit and shot by firing squad in the ba
But the fate of Pamo Kusang did not silence Tibetan w

decades that followed. For a time, female Tibetan protests
large, peaceful events focused on bearing witness. But now,
resistance movement enters a new phase, that is changing
Tibetan women are now setting themselves ablaze to pro
rule in increasing numbers, a radical shift from decades
resistence. Since March 2011, some forty Tibetans have set
fire in the name of a free Tibet; as of this writing, seven have
all but one of whom died from the self-immolation.
Scant details are available. Tibet remains shut off; very few journalists
have been able to get past the many checkpoints sequestering the story
from the world. Almost no pictures and every fewer reliable eyewitness
accounts have made it into the international media.
The nonprofit advocacy group Free Tibet, which says it relies on a net-
work of well-established sources on the ground throughout the region to
promote awareness, shared details of who the martyred women were and
how they died.
On October 17, 2011, for the very first time in Tibet's history, a
twenty-year-old female Buddhist nun named Tenzin Wangmo died after
setting herself on fire outside the Dechen Chokorling nunnery in Ngaba.
A photograph shows a delicate face and a serene smile. She reportedly
told fellow nuns on her last morning that she had something of great
importance to do. After she set herself on fire, she is said to have walked
forward, slowly, until she collapsed.
70 WORLD AFFAIRS
Gloria S. Riviera
The second woman was named Palden Choetso. She was thir
years old and had been a nun for fifteen years. She chose
place, the Chume Bridge in the center of Tawu County, in easter
when she self-immolated on November 3, 2011. She was well known in
the community; a vigil was
"Several experts I spoke with later held in her memory.
As I learned about her, I
told me that the families of
couldn't help but note that
those who commit acts of self- the name "Palden" means
immolation often honor their "spontaneously accom-

plished."
loved ones as martyrs. In the The third nun on this
list is an eighteen-year-old
words of one, 'These individuals
woman by the name of Ten-
are regarded as heroes.'" zin Choedon. In the photo
she left behind, she allows
herself a soft smile. She was from the same Ngaba nunnery as Te
Wangmo. According to Free Tibet, Tenzin Choedon called out slogans
protest against the Chinese government as she burned.
That the first three Tibetan women to self-immolate were all nuns is
not surprising. Carole Devine, in her book Determination: Tibetan Women

and the Struggle for an Independent Tibet, writes that nuns maintain a unique
position in the fight for Tibet's freedom: "Knowing they may be arrested
and tortured during their protests, and knowing they do not have chil-
dren who would suffer as a result of their imprisonment or death, they are
willing to be leaders in the independence movement."
There were no such comforts for Tsering Kyi or, more dramatically, a
woman only known as Rinchen, the first known lay women to self-immolate.
Tsering was twenty when, on March 3, 2011, she set herself on fire in
front of a vegetable market in the village of Tro Kho Menma Shang, in
eastern Tibet's Machu County. Days before her death, according to Free
Tibet, she had talked about Ngaba, where two of the nuns had self-im-
molated: "Tibetans are burning themselves. We should do something for
Tibet. Life is meaningless if we don't do something for Tibet."
Tsering was followed a day later by Rinchen. Her act was especially
momentous because she was the first mother to take her own life. A widow
with four children, she set herself on fire in front of a police surveillance
station at the main gate of the Kirti Monastery in eastern Tibet, a place
widely known as a respected institution of Buddhist thou

of the recent crackdown, hundred of Chinese officials moved into the
monastery to monitor all activity. Reports are it is now a virtual prison. As
flames engulfed Rinchen, she cried out, "Tibet needs freedom and Gyalwa
Rinpoche" - the Dalai Lama - "needs to return to Tibet."
On May 30, 2012, another young mother felt compelled to make the
same choice. Rechock, who left behind three children, died at the scene
after setting herself ablaze in front of the Jonang Dzamthang monastery
in Barma township. Free Tibet reports that she spent her final days tend-
ing animals in the countryside before travelling into town to commit her
act of protest.
The last woman on this list, as of this writing, may have made the big-
gest impact. She is Dekyi Choezom, who is also the only woman believed
to have survived her injuries. What we know of her reasoning is enlight-
ening in how purely political, as opposed to emotional, her motivation
appears to have been.
On June 27th, Dekyi set herself on fire during a protest over land
rights in Jyekundo, Eastern Tibet. Jyekundo suffered a devastating earth-
quake in 2010. Soon after, the government announced plans to confiscate
land or "relocate" residents to make way for new government buildings, a
decision Tibetan residents are resisting.
"This is the first time a Tibetan in Tibet has set fire to themself along-
side a larger protest," said Stephanie Brigden, director of Free Tibet.
What is striking about Dekyi's act is what followed. Two of her rela-
tives involved in the protest were reportedly beaten and detained. Several
monks, as well as locals, protested for their release with a very specific
threat. They declared that they, too, would set themselves on fire if their
demands were not met. Later that day, authorities released Dekyi's rela-
tives. She is believed to be receiving treatement for her injuries in a hos-
pital in Xining.
Up until this point, self-immolations by women had been indepen-
dent, self-contained acts of protest. Dekyi's action, within the context of
a larger protest, changed that. We can't know if authorities released her
relatives because they feared having blood on their hands. But we do
know that her action had a domino effect that did two things. It forced
the hand of authorities and, perhaps intentionally, it ended the prece-
dent that self-immolations by women had to be solitary, self-contained
forms of protest.
72 WORLD AFFAIRS
Gloria S. Riviera
In Hindu mythology, Sati, one of the many wives of the god

said to be despondent after her father insulted her choice of
sets herself on fire and dies. But many Tibetan scholars say to a
self-immolation with despair is incorrect.
"It is a conscious political act," says Yangdon Dhondup, a sch
religion at the University of London. "It cannot be compared to
which is not a Buddhist way of ending one's life." Even Buddha h
sacrificed his own body for the welfare of hungry animals.
The Beijing-based writer and Tibet advocate Tsering Woeser, wh
under near-constant surveillance, told me that there are historical
ences to self-immolation as an act of devotion and joy; a demons
of loyalty to the religion. Research shows that the act of self-imm
has been tolerated, even exalted, in the practice of Mahayana Bud
which is not a sect but a collection of Buddhist practices and inclu
and Tibetan Buddhism. Such protest became familiar to Weste
1963, when a monk named Thich Quang Due self-immolated in th
dle of a busy Saigon street to protest the South Vietnamese gover
imposition of the Catholic religion. In the week following, accor
Time magazine story, thirteen other monks followed suit, as "set
self on fire rather suddenly became a political act."
Self-immolation may not be unique as an ecstatic political g
among devout Buddhists, but it moved into a new context when i
part of Tibet's female resistance.
So why are women making that choice?
"Tibetan women have been at the forefront of the protest mov
says Stephanie Brigden of Free Tibet. "They have one of the
records of nonviolent protest in history, but they are feeling ab
desperate."
Monks and nuns are now being forced by the Chinese to go through
endless political re-education camps. They must denounce the Dalai
Lama and are under constant surveillance. They are a prime target for
the Chinese government because they are so identified with indigenous
Tibetan culture.
But then what of Tsering Kyi, the twenty-year-old student from Machu
Country, in Gansu Province, who set herself on fire in the spring of 2011?
Although not of a religious order, she too represented a part of Tibetan
identity as a member of a nomadic family. Once central to Tibetan life,
nomads are no longer allowed to move freely with thei

nomadic communities are forcibly resettled and pover
among them. Rinchen, the widowed mother who killed he
ent support of Tsering Kyi, also came from poverty in on
hardest hit by the Chinese occupation, Ngaba County.
What will the legacy of these women be? Several expert
told me that the families of those who commit acts of self-immolation
often honor their loved ones as martyrs. In the words of Brigden: "These
individuals are regarded as heroes."
More than one observer of the situation in Tibet shared with me
a worrisome theory: that in some areas of Tibet there is a belief

enough incidents of self-immolation will generate much-needed int
tional attention. The additional pressure on the Chinese government
is believed, will force it to cease its persecution of Tibet. But this s
unlikely given the extent of Beijing's control and its ability to use its
ical and economic clout to stifle international interest in the issue.
When China's leaders gathered in Beijing this year at the Great Hall
of the People for the annual National People's Congress, they took turns
claiming the stage to announce what the future will hold. A lower GDP, more
military spending, promises to fix the housing market - the performances
engineered to maintain stability and calm at any cost in the face of a looming
transition of power at the very highest levels. One of those who spoke was
Wu Zegang, head of the Tibetan region in Sichuan Province, where many o
the self-immolations are taking place. He stated contemptuously that these
acts were intended "to divide the nation." As extreme as their choice may be,
the women who have set themselves ablaze over the past year seem actually
to have accomplished quite the reverse: they've brought the nation - as they
define it, the nation of Tibet - closer together. ©
74 WORLD AFFAIRS

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THE ULTIMATE PROTEST: Women Self-Immolate in Tibet

Author(s): Gloria S. Riviera

T his spring marked the fifty-third anniversary of the Tibetan uprising

12, 1959, thousands of Tibetan women organized a nonviolent protest in

refused to name names, insisting that she alone was respo

But the fate of Pamo Kusang did not silence Tibetan w

immolation often honor their "spontaneously accom-

not surprising. Carole Devine, in her book Determination: Tibetan Women

widely known as a respected institution of Buddhist thou

In Hindu mythology, Sati, one of the many wives of the god

nomads are no longer allowed to move freely with thei

a worrisome theory: that in some areas of Tibet there is a belief

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