Demonstrators outside United Nations Headquarters in New York in November, in solidarity with Tibetans
across western China who have self-immolated to protest Chinese rule.
TIBET: At around 9 a.m. local time today, in the Ngaba region of eastern Tibet, 29-year-old Kunchol Kyab set himself on fire, apparently in protest against the treatment of Tibetans by the Chinese government. It’s not yet known whether he is dead or alive, as Chinese security forces removed his body after dousing the flames, according to phayul.com.
Kunchol Kyab is the 90th Tibetan to perform this extreme act of protest since 2009, and the 28th to do so this month. According to reports from Voice of America and Christopher Bodeen at the Associated Press earlier this week, the escalation in the number and frequency of self-immolations, and the recent student protests in Qinghai province last week, suggests that Tibetan protests have entered a new phase.
The Revealer has been following events in western China for some time, and we will continue to do so at a new page on the site dedicated to news and commentary on the Tibetan protests. We’ll bring you updates on that project next week.
BURMA: The BBC’s Feargal Keane hears echoes of Northern Ireland and the Balkans in Burma’s Rakhine state, where clashes between Muslim Rohingya and Rakhine Buddhists have displaced thousands of people [video]. News of the conflict made the front page of the New York Times today for the second time since the violence flared up in June. Next week, The Revealer will bring you further analysis of the conflict from Thailand-based journalist Francis Wade.
INDIA: In 2011, Revealer contributor Meera Subramanian wrote an award-winning essay for the Virginia Quarterly Review describing the human consequences of Mumbai’s declining vulture populations. Today, Gardiner Harris at the New York Times reports that the Parsi community may have found a way to return vultures to Mumbai’s skies and to revive the ritual of “sky burial,” by building vulture aviaries.