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.
Two Tibetan protesters were killed in Sichuan province, and protests were also reported from Qinghai. The new violence comes as the number of Tibetans who have set themselves on fire in acts of protest since the wave began in February 2009 reached 22.
Although the details and even the death toll are disputed by Chinese authorities and Tibetan exile and support groups, a wave of protest and repression has left several dead in the Tibetan ethnic areas of Sichuan province this week.
Kazakh interior ministry troops fired on striking oil workers in the Caspian Basin city Zhanaozen, leaving at least 10 dead. The violence came in a move to oust hundreds of workers from a square they had been occupying for six months.
Following 13 self-immolations by Tibetan monks since 2009, principally in Sichuan province, one was reported for the first from within the Tibet Autonomous Region itself. The monk is said to have survived and is hospitalized.
In a move initiated by the Obama administration, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to waive Bush-era human rights restrictions on military aid to the Islam Karimov dictatorship in Uzbekistan.
Kyrgyzstan’s newly elected president, Almazbek Atambayev, announced upon his victory that he will close Manas air base, which has been critical to the US campaign in Afghanistan, after the lease expires in 2014.
