It’s hard to imagine that the Tibetan inspired art of Wang Yiguang is the work of a man who grew up on the North China Plain. But Tibet’s vigorous yaks, winding railways and cheerful girls have been the subject of Wang’s creations since he first set foot on the magical plateau in 2002.
Posted just last week to Vimeo (password duihua), The Dialogue is a film by Wang Wo that looks at the Chinese government’s increasingly restrictive policies toward non-governmental contact between minority groups (specifically Tibetan and Uyghur) and Han Chinese. The film centers on an attempt by Chinese intellectuals and human rights lawyers to make contact with the Dalai Lama.
Spain, which recognizes universal justice -- meaning its court magistrates walk eternally with backs bowed under the burden of universal injustice, the weight of sadness -- issued a warrant on Tuesday for the arrest of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin and four others "as part of a probe into alleged genocide in Tibet," reports AP and Al Jazeera.
Via Deadspin, "The Dalai Lama Is A Giant Bandwagoner":
Tenzin Gyatso is the 14th Dalai Lama, the latest in a long line of reincarnations of Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva embodiment of compassion. He's also an insufferable homer who loves free hats.
This could well be a headline from the Onion, but it’s from Time: Tibetans Turn to Alternative Protest as Self-Immolations Prove Futile What other forms of protest, one asks? The story begins anecdotally with Norbu Jorden, a young man who tried to kill himself with fire but failed. Now Jorden is expressing his dissent differently. On a... Read more »
On Monday, Free Tibet reported that a 28-year-old woman, Lobsang Thogmey, set herself on fire on March 13 in Aba Prefecture in Sichuan province. It noted: “Her husband, Dolma Kyab, 31, was later given ashes and told she had died and been cremated by the authorities.”
Tragic, depressing, infuriating. Via AFP: A Tibetan monk doused himself in petrol in a Kathmandu restaurant on Wednesday and set himself on fire, marking the 100th self-immolation bid in a wave of protests against Chinese rule since 2009. Police in the Nepalese capital told AFP that the exile had burned himself in an eatery near... Read more »
In Foreign Policy’s introduction to its latest slideshow of rare photos from Tibet during the Cultural Revolution, the line that jumps out to me is the last one: “This installment of FP’s Once Upon a Time series shows the Land of Snows from a long-forgotten period, when Tibet’s enemy wasn’t China, but itself.” The line, I’m sure,... Read more »
State media is reporting that state media aired a documentary on Tibetan self-immolations on Sunday. Here are the opening paragraphs of Xinhua’s story about China Central Television: National broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) has released a documentary on self-immolation in the country’s Tibetan-inhabited areas.
Government-run Gannan Daily reported Monday that China’s supreme court, top prosecution body, and police jointly issued the legal opinion that those who incite or abet self-immolations should be charged with “intentional murder.” In an article that reeks of Chinese media, it states (translation made available yesterday by San Francisco-based Duihua Foundation): So that the recent... Read more »
