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.
Courts in China’s Xinjiang province sentenced to death four members of the Uighur minority in connection with attacks this July that left 40 dead. The exiled World Uyghur Congress believes the “confessions were extracted through torture.”
The indigenous Telengit people in Russia’s Altai Republic are turning to the international community to help stop a new gas pipeline to China that would cut through their sacred lands and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Authorities in China’s Sichuan province have charged three Tibetan monks with murder over the death of a fellow monk who set himself on fire in an apparent protest action. The local Ngaba Kirti monastery remains under siege by security forces.
China says that new deadly attacks in Kashgar are the work of Uighur militants of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) who were trained at bases in Pakistan—an accusation that could upset Islamabad’s strategic alliance with Beijing.
The “Free Tibet” crowd is not disturbed as the Dalai Lama celebrates his 76th birthday with John Boehner—while the Dalai-demonization set continues to portray the Tibetan struggle as a CIA astroturf creation.
Over a dozen exiled Tibetans have been arrested in Nepal over the past week, in a crackdown against refugees while attempting to celebrate the Buddhist religious festival of Saka Dawa in the capital Kathmandu.
A Tibetan writer was sentenced to four years in prison last month after helping edit a publication critical of Chinese policy in the restive region. The move comes amid a new wave of protests and arrests in Tbet.
Chinese authorities have tightened security across Inner Mongolia province after days of unrest, which began when a Mongol herdsman was killed by a coal truck as a group of traditional herders sought to block a convoy from crossing their lands.
Lobsang Sangay, newly elected prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, met with three activists on indefinite hunger strike in New Delhi to protest a Chinese crackdown at the Kirti monastery in Sichuan province.
The Dalai Lama is stepping down as political leader of the Tibetan exile government, while Beijing passed a law mandating that the Tibetan leader be reincarnated within China.
An ethnic Uighur website editor was sentenced to seven years in prison in China following a secret trial, weeks after four others received death sentences in connection with armed attacks.
