Apart from the ghastly number of deaths, there is little to indicate any change whatsoever

FALLING within days of one another this (Gregorian) year, the Han Chinese and Tibetan New Year’s celebrations have almost shared a single calendar. For both peoples, it is traditionally a time of wishing for good fortune and new beginnings. In political terms however there are precious few signs of change in their troubled relationship. Tibetans continue to protest Chinese rule by burning themselves to death. The most recent self-immolation was reported by overseas activist groups to have occurred on February 13th, the third day of Losar, the Tibetan New Year holiday. Drugpa Khar, a young father of three, died after soaking himself with petrol and setting himself ablaze in a Tibetan area of Gansu province. On the same day in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu—the home of a large community of exiled Tibetans—another, unidentified Tibetan died after immolating himself. He was said to be a monk who had only recently arrived from Tibet. On February 3rd, in a Tibetan area of Sichuan province, a 37-year-old monk named Lobsang Namgyal came to yet another fiery end. News of his death took ten days to emerge. When it did, it was reported widely as being the 100th self-immolation since 2009, when Tibetans adopted this extreme form of protest.

Even as the number of self-immolations spiked dramatically during November, when China held its once-a-decade leadership transition, hopes arose that newly installed leader Xi Jinping might harbour a softer attitude towards Tibetans’ demands for greater autonomy—or that he might at least have new ideas about handling the situation.

Were that the case, Mr Xi is not yet ready to act. Early in his tenure, he has chosen instead to reaffirm familiar hardline policies. On January 29th, China announced the appointment of Losang Gyaltsen as Tibet’s new governor. An ethnic Tibetan, according to his official biography he joined the Communist Party at the age of 21, pursued an academic career in Marxism-Leninism studies, and later became mayor of Lhasa. In his first public remarks as governor, he praised the Party for its “peaceful liberation” of Tibet, its socialist system and its ethnic-autonomy policies.

In recent months, China has also intensified its security crackdown, both within the formal boundaries of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), and in the heavily Tibetan areas of the surrounding provinces (ie Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu), where most of the unrest and self-immolations have been reported.

Because China seldom allows outside observers into these areas, news of the latest developments often comes from human-rights groups and Tibetan activists based overseas. According to their accounts, officials have been withholding the passports of ethnic Tibetans in order to restrict their foreign travel.

State officials are also reported to have cracked down with collective punishment, cutting off funding for projects located in villages that have connections to the suicide-protesters as well as public benefits to individual households.

Earlier this month, China sentenced one man to 13 years’ imprisonment for trying to incite a monk to self-immolate, and detained 70 others on unspecified charges thought to be related to self-immolations.

Chinarejects Tibetan claims that the suicides are a desperate response to profound grievances. Instead the official position has it that “the Dalai Lama clique” has encouraged extremism and “masterminded and incited the self-immolations”. But the Dalai Lama’s organisation, the India-based Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), has repeatedly called on Tibetans “not to undertake drastic actions” while at the same time urging China to end what it calls the repression and economic marginalisation of Tibetans in their own homeland.

The CTA has also called on Tibetans, in light of the “continuing tragic situation”, to refrain from their normal merrymaking during this year’s holiday season, and to observe only the customary religious rituals. It does not seem like a propitious New Year for any of the parties concerned.

(Picture credit: AFP)