Monday 11 February 2013

70 held in one prefecture for Nov ’12 Tibet self-immolations

(TibetanReview.net, Feb08, 2013) China said Feb 7 it had taken into custody 70 Tibetans as “criminal suspects” and formally arrested 12 of them in Huangnan (Tibetan: Malho) Prefecture of Qinghai Province in connection with a string of self-immolations which took place in Nov 2012. Lyu Benqian, deputy chief of the Qinghai Provincial Public Security Department, said Police will seriously punish those who incite innocent people to commit self-immolation, reported the official Xinhua news agency.
The report cited Lyu as saying the ‘Dalai Lama clique’ masterminded and incited the self-immolations. According to Lyu, who is also head of a special police team investigating the self-immolations, sending personal information, such as photos of the victims, overseas amounts to promoting self-immolations. So also praying for the self-immolation dead and wounded.
As regards the self-immolators’ motive, Lyu has maintained, "Some of the victims were frustrated and pessimistic in life, and they wanted to earn respect by self-immolation." And “a few individuals with a strong sense of extreme nationalism showed sympathy with the self-immolators and followed their example," he has added.
Overall, Lyu has claimed, the self-immolation cases were influenced by the separatism of the Dalai Lama clique, as the Dalai Lama has prayed for self-immolators and Tibetan separatists overseas flaunt them as "heroes". And he has added, “Self-immolations in neighboring Sichuan and Gansu provinces encouraged more self-immolators” in Huangnan.

No comments:

Post a Comment