A 22-year old Tibetan student from eastern Tibet burned himself to death in protest against China’s occupation of Tibet.
Lhamo Tashi set himself on fire around midnight outside a police station in Tso area in Kanlho Tibetan autonomous prefecture, China’s Gansu province on 17 September 2014. He died of his injuries.
The self-immolation protest coincided with the Chinese president Xi Jinping’s state visit to India last week.
“The Chinese police took away his body and later informed his family that Lhamo Tashi died. Despite the requests of his family members, the Chinese police refused to handover the body and cremated it themselves. They only gave the family his ashes,” a source who has close contacts with Tibetans in Tso told TCHRD.
Lhamo Tashi is the 131st Tibetan to self-immolate and the 113th to die. The self-immolators have demanded Tibet’s freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) considers the self-immolators terrorists. In December 2012, the PRC introduced legislation criminalizing self-immolations and punishing everyone who expresses sympathy for them.
China’s highest court, the Supreme People’s Court, stated that the self-immolations were the result of “pre-mediated coordination and organization of antagonistic forces inside and outside of China in a plot to split the state, damage the unity of the nationalities, and disrupt the social order.”
Lhamo Tashi was from Amchok village, Bora Township, Sangchu County, Kanlho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province. A student of a teacher training school in Kanlho, he is survived by his father Choepa Tsering, mother Dukar Tso, and his two brothers.