A notice in Labrang by the Gannan Prefecture Public Security Department, Gansu Province, China. (Citizen journalist/VOA Tibetan)
October 25, 2012
Posters are going up in parts of China warning ethnic Tibetans against setting themselves on fire in protest and offering money in exchange for information.
The posters say police will pay $8,000 to anyone who provides information “on the people who plan, incite to carry out, control and lure people to commit self-immolation.” The announcement promises a reward of about $30,000 to anyone who gives creditable information about the region’s four most recent self-immolations.
Tibet Self-Immolation Map, October 23, 2012 update
Authorities, the posters indicate, will keep secret the names of any informants and “be responsible for their security.”
According to a full translation by the International Campaign for Tibet, the notices also decry self-immolation as “an extreme action against human beings, against society” and warns would-be protesters such actions “are ungrateful of how your parents raised you.”
China has long-accused Tibetan exiles of self-immolating as part of a separatist struggle, denouncing them as terrorists.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei again accused the Dalai Lama of inciting the deadly protests on Wednesday, saying it “is despicable and deserves the people’s condemnation.”
The Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile say they oppose all violence. According to Britain’s The Guardian, Tibet’s “government in exile” has recently issued a formal call to end self-immolations.
A recent spate of self-immolations
At least three Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest Chinese policies in the past five days, and six Tibetans have died in self-immolation protests this month.
On Tuesday, an older Tibetan man has set himself ablaze outside the military headquarters in Labrang, not far from the highly respected Labrang Monastery in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. His self-immolation came just one day after a 61-year-old farmer set himself on fire near the same monastery, which, located in China’s northwestern Gansu province, was the scene of deadly protests against Chinese rule in 2008.
