Human rights lawyer Xu Zhiyong, who defends Chinese peasants struggling to keep their lands, proclaims his support for the Tibetans and calls for Han solidarity with their cause.
A court in Kazakhstan sentenced an outspoken political activist to seven-and-a-half years in jail for allegedly colluding with a fugitive billionaire to overthrow the government.
A Tibetan poet, Gudrup, died after setting himself on fire in the Tibet Autonomous Region, leaving a blog post calling for Tibetans not “lose courage” in the struggle for freedom.
Tajikistan sealed its border with Afghanistan after clashes with armed rebels left 48 dead—a re-escalation of conflict over control of the cross-border traffic in Afghan opium.
Plans by China’s government for the “resettlement” of the country’s last remaining nomads over the next five years have sparked protests in Inner Mongolia, with traditional Mongol herders accusing authorities of land-grabbing.
Twelve children were injured in a police raid on an “illegal” Islamic school at Hotan, in China’s restive Xinjiang province. Authorities say school staff set off an explosive, but rights groups say the casualties were caused when police used tear gas.
Two young Tibetan men set fire to themselves outside one of Tibet’s holiest shrines, the Jokhang Temple—marking the first self-immolations in Lhasa, Tibet’s historic capital. Chinese state media report that one of the young men died.
An elderly man set himself on fire in Kyrgyzstan’s southern city of Osh, the scene of repeated rival protests between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks. Labor strikes and local protests have meanwhile shut down the country’s giant Kumtor gold mine.
Contradictory accounts of the Tibetan self-immolations—now numbering over 35—reveal rival conceptions of Tibet’s borders by the Chinese state and the Dalai Lama’s exile government, with control of critical resources in the background.
Two Tibetan monks set themselves on fire in Sichuan province—bringing the total of protest self-immolations in little more than a year to over 30. Days earlier, a Tibetan exile self-immolated a protest in New Delhi.
Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov was sworn in as Turkmenistan’s president, having won by a predictable 97%. His personalistic dictatorship mirrors that of his autocratic predecessor “Turkmenbashi”—and is the lynchpin of the planned trans-Afghan pipeline.
Chinese authorities agreed to halt a mining project on Mount Kawagebo, which is sacred to Tibetans, after local villagers, their pleas rebuffed, pushed some $300,000 worth of mining equipment into the Salween River.
