DOLMA SQUARE, outside Rongwo monastery in Tongren, Qinghai province, generally feels empty in its hugeness, punctuated only by a golden stupa at its heart, and the occasional monk. On November 9th it was swarming with activity, as thousands of Tibetans, mostly students, demonstrated against ethnic injustices; an 18-year-old Tibetan, Kalsang Jinpa, had burnt himself to death there the day before. This was the third self-immolation in the region in less than a week. On November 7th Tamdin Tso, a 23-year-old nomad, set himself on fire in a nearby township. Dorjee Lhundup, a painter of the religious thangka scrolls for which the county is famous (as in the photo above), and father of two, did the same on the streets of Tongren last weekend. According to the government in exile, 69 Tibetans have now killed themselves in this way. All three of these burnings were followed by impromptu protests. A crowd of thousands of residents and monks had gathered to cremate Mr Lhundup’s body on the day he died. Free Tibet, an activist organisation, reports that locals were afraid to go out after the event, with security officers on patrol, and that internet and mobile service was “interrupted to prevent the spread of information”. The demonstration early on the morning of the 10th disrupted traffic as students and other protesters marched across town, raising nationalistic Tibetan slogans. Their grievances can be traced back to Chinese control of such ethnically Tibetan regions as Tongren. The police and army presence here is oppressive. Tibetan culture and language is downplayed in schools. Family-planning regulations are increasingly constrictive. And religious expression is curtailed, starting with the ban on images of the exiled Dalai Lama (all three suicides were reportedly committed in the name of freedom for Tibet and the return of the Dalai Lama). One Tibetan resident complained simply that the Chinese “control everything”.

Tongren has in the past been a hotspot for Tibetan protest. The 2008 riots began here, a month before the first trouble in Lhasa. Earlier this year, two more locals burned themselves to death, including a monk of Rongwo monastery on March 14th, the anniversary of the most violent day of rioting in the Tibetan capital. As such, security is especially heavy, with the presence of the People’s Armed Police and periodical restrictions on the number of Tibetans who are permitted to gather.

The tightening of control and information is a fall-back response to self-immolation across Tibetan areas. It breeds discontent while making mass protest difficult, and so creates a vicious circle. Last week a monk in Rongwo monastery who had been imprisoned in 2008 for participating in the riots then told me that he was still under surveillance, and that many other monks were informers. Suicide by fire, he said, is regarded by some as the only option for dramatic protest.

There was no reported security response to Friday’s peaceful march, which was the largest mass demonstration in the region for years. Teachers exhorted the students’ parents to take their children home, for fear that it might escalate, and schools closed for the rest of the day.

The timing of the rally was awkward: it came one day after China’s Communist Party convened to ratify its new leadership. Lobsang Sangay, political leader of the Tibetan-exile government, commented: “Chinese leaders selected during the 18th Party Congress must recognise that China’s hard-line policies in Tibet have utterly failed and only through dialogue can a peaceful and lasting solution be found.”

The Chinese response, that investment in Tibetan areas has brought great economic benefit to many, is undeniable. Tongren is a boom town, with many new high-rise residential and office blocks, which have enriched Tibetan property developers. Schools and hospitals are better funded and equipped, and there is a new centre for disease control.

Some of the effects of modernity are more subtly detrimental to Tibetan culture. When Kumbum monastery near Xining, Qinghai’s capital, was singled out for tourism, it saw an influx of female Han Chinese tour guides. The resulting temptation for some of the monks winnowed their numbers, as did some of the other sorts of interference that tourists and their cash can bring. Rongwo monastery fears the same fate. And all the while, the growth of Tongren attracts more Han immigrants, diluting its historically Tibetan identity.

Ethnic tensions have long run high in Tongren, most noticeably between Tibetans—who form almost 80% of the regional population—and Hui Muslims, who comprise less than 10%. Religious differences play a large role, and their history of bad blood doesn’t help—many Tibetans suffered under a Muslim warlord, Ma Bufang, who controlled the region in the late 1930s and 40s. More immediately, the Hui claim the lion’s share of the business opportunities in Tongren, by which they have garnered an unfair reputation as cheats. “You can eat a Hui’s cooking,” one refrain goes, “but you can’t trust a Hui’s words.”

A Tibetan local who works in Xining, however, said this ethnic conflict is in part a veil. A favoured tactic among Tongren’s Tibetans looking to protest against the Chinese, he said, is to pick a fight with a Hui Muslim, knowing that the Han authorities will take the side of the Hui, whose community contributes more to the state financially and causes less trouble. This in turn allows them to protest that injustice, and all that is implied behind it. If their complaints could be heard more directly, perhaps 18-year-olds would not feel the need to set themselves on fire.

(Picture credit: AFP)